Financial News - jobmarket, career & recruitment news | News for the finance sector, covering the job market, employment & recruitment trends

PricewaterhouseCoopers is expanding, and the Middle East operation looks set to benefit. PwC's attempt become the dominant Big Four accountancy in the Middle East created something of a poaching frenzy earlier this year. As well as hiring 25 new partners, it also added around 400 staff in the region. This ambitious expansion seems to have already reaped some benefits. The firm has reported a 4 percent rise in full-year revenues to $3.5... Read more

Banks are hiring compliance staff. Compliance professionals are hot. They are paid more, respected more, talked about more. But they still don’t have a clue what’s going on. Fabrice Tourre worked for Goldman Sachs in London. In September 2009, the SEC told Goldman Sachs that it was planning enforcement action against Tourre. This was a huge issue: when it became public Goldman’s share price tanked. Evidently aware of the implications of... Read more

Equity researchers are on the rise [Japan] Foreign firms in Tokyo are beginning to increase their equity research hiring. And though much of the current activity is for replacements or upgrades, recruiters are hopeful that some serious expansion might be just around the corner. Get set for a fixed-income talent fight [Singapore] The People’s Bank of China’s recent announcement allowing RMB held offshore to be invested in its domestic bond market is... Read more

Capital markets firms are spending rather hefty sums of money on IT trading infrastructures across multiple asset classes this year. Not surprisingly, tech pros with expertise in this area are finding their services highly in demand. Globally, firms are likely to spend $13.4 billion on trading infrastructures, including data servers, servers, storage and networking, according to a new report from Tabb Group. This is across equities, fixed income, FX, derivatives, commodities... Read more

KKR and Perella Weinberg are in talks to hire members of Goldman Sachs's U.S. principal-strategies group. Bob Howard, who heads the group in the U.S., is leading the discussions, which are still in the early stage. [Bloomberg] Sumitomo plans to start a brokerage businesses in London, New York and Hong Kong within the next six months through its Nikko Cordial Securities unit. As our UK site notes, it said the same... Read more

We’ve all heard about how recruitment in Asia is outpacing the rest of the planet, but that doesn’t mean foreigners are walking into financial-sector roles. Some job functions are more welcoming to overseas candidates than others. “Large banks are open to bringing in Western talents who can replicate what they have done in their previous product, strategy and middle-office roles. However, the activity we see is largely limited to those areas,”... Read more

Investment banking analysts do not have pleasant things to say about the industry they cover. On one hand, Bloomberg has seen a report by Meredith Whitney in which Meredith predicts 80,000 job cuts at ‘securities firms around the world’ over the next 18 months. On the other, JPMorgan analyst Kian Abouhossein is back with predictions that pay will plummet. He thinks compensation per head will fall 32 percent between 2009 and... Read more

Securities firms will cut as many as 80,000 jobs globally - about 10 percent of their workforce - in the next 18 months, predicts Meredith Whitney. The cuts will begin after 2010 compensation is distributed. And for more good news: In a report obtained by Bloomberg, Whitney says comp will be "down dramatically." Her reasoning: “The key product drivers of Wall Street’s revenues and profits over the past decade have... Read more

Northern Trust created new positions in its global fund services business, naming Paul Fahey director of global product management and development, Marc Mallett global head of client conversions, Fiona Horsewill as global head of PMO/ Architecture Strategy for GFS; and Mark Herraman, head of investment operations outsourcing client service for the EMEA region. [Reuters] Credit Suisse appointed James Hong as CEO of its private bank, to be based in Hong Kong.... Read more

In a fit of political correctness, banks are eschewing prop traders. First it was JPMorgan. Now it’s Goldman Sachs. There are not places for all these prop traders in hedge funds, which are fussy about the prop traders they take on. They only want the very best. Does this mean most prop traders will be relegated to the oblivion of the spare room? Apparently not. We have spoken to two and they... Read more

A recent story showcasing recruiters' complaints about "crazy" candidates seems to have hit a nerve among many of our users. Several comments draw a link between overeager job-seekers - who recruiters may view as pests - and uncommunicative recruiters whom sincere and well-behaved job-seekers may label rude and unprofessional. The question of whether recruiters should be more responsive to candidates who've been eliminated from a client's interview process (and those job-seekers... Read more

The longer this recession goes on, the more transitioning professionals will stumble into the "overqualified" pit. Too much of a good thing is wonderful, said Mae West. But that's not how hiring managers see it. Relevant work experience, advanced degrees and credentials - while prerequisites for many finance jobs - can disqualify as well as qualify. If a candidate previously held a role at a higher level than the one she's... Read more

Picture this: You’ve just lost your job and you’re scouring the job boards, looking for something - anything - that matches your professional qualifications and experience. Suddenly, you spot a position that looks too good to be true. The job title is perfect, the responsibilities are right up your alley, and the firm is… Oh, wait a minute. It's your former employer; the one that just handed you a pink... Read more

When considering whether to pursue a credential such as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, the next question likely to come to mind after "Will it upgrade my job prospects or compensation?" is, "Will what I learn improve my job performance?" A review of published research "reveals a patchwork of studies that don't uniformly and unequivocally show outperformance by charterholders," writes Christopher Wright in the January-February issue of CFA Magazine, published... Read more

If someone gives you resume advice while referring to a detailed checklist of common resume mistakes, are you being deceived? Job-search guru Nick Corcodilos thinks so. A recent post on his Ask the Headhunter blog skewers free resume critiques as “the new career-industry racket.” But his outrage fails to stand up to examination. Corcodilos has made a career out of riding the high horse, exposing a long list of career-related... Read more

Hopefully, you'll never need this step-by-step guide to surviving a layoff. But if you do, following these steps will put you on your way to a new opportunity. 1. Negotiate a Good Deal It may be possible to negotiate at least some terms of your layoff. Employers often budget substantial funds for such purposes, but exiting employees don't realize they can negotiate or they are too traumatized to ask. As soon as... Read more

Even as the finance industry writhes amid recession and restructuring, some jobless professionals are having trouble adjusting their expectations to the new reality. A column in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer details the saga of one Byron Wilson, a former investment advisor, insurance company vice president and Big Four CPA. In 2007, Wilson left a steady job to build his own investment advisory business at Smith Barney, leaving little time to build a... Read more

Kerry Jordan, CFA, has been out of work since January 2008, despite 14 years of experience at FBR Capital Markets, Bank of America, and NASDAQ. You'd think her work in new business development, strategic planning, risk management and raising capital would have left her well-positioned to land a new job quickly. But here's the rub: "Everyone is in retrenchment mode and the few positions that do become available are filled... Read more