Fund management is a far more lucrative career than investment banking. And, fund managers are actually hiring
When it became apparent earlier this week that the highest paid director at Pimco Europe earned twice as much as Jamie Dimon for 2011, it raised a few eyebrows (or at least should have done). Suddenly, fund management appears far better remunerated than investment banking. Pimco’s high earner was not an exception. The company’s latest [...]
Late Lunchtime Links: A pictorial representation of where you do and don’t want to be working, business by business and bank by bank
Now that most banks have reported their first quarter results, it’s possible to get a handle on what’s going on, which business areas are doing well, which business areas within which banks are doing best, and which are doing badly. Research firm Tricumen has put together the following arrow-filled chart depicting what has been hot [...]
Want to work for a successful FICC sales and trading business that’s taking more risk? Try SocGen. Also: an update on French banks’ voluntary redundancy programmes
Forget Morgan Stanley and its 34% year-on-year increase in fixed income trading revenues. Forget Goldman Sachs and its mitigating factors. Forget JPMorgan. If you want to work for a bank that’s outperformed the rest in fixed income so far in 2012 AND is willing to take risk where appropriate, think: SocGen. SocGen’s first quarter results [...]
Banks are pulling out of longevity swaps, but insurers are hiring
Investment banks may be pulling out of the longevity swap market, but insurers, reinsurers and consultants are all starting to build their teams. Unfortunately, hiring is relatively diminutive. Longevity swaps are complex, but essentially they’re a tool that allows pension schemes to mitigate against the risk of members living longer than expected. Last year was [...]
GUEST COMMENT: The hell that is working in an investment bank’s presentation centre
Junior bankers do more than their fair share of grunt work, but there are some tasks that are beyond even them: nicely formatting complex PowerPoint presentations, following all the company guidelines for a consistent ‘brand look’, creating spiffy graphs, working with high-end illustrations, and giving everything a makeover. This is what the presentations centre at [...]
Late Lunchtime Links: 56 year old trader who went from tea boy to global head, is giving it all up to travel and be artistic
Jeremy Charles had the sort of career path that was possible in the 1970s, but is impossible now that everyone is hired through graduate programmes. 56 year old Charles began his career in 1975 as a tea boy at Rothschild. From there, he moved into trading before joining HSBC in 1999 and remaining there ever [...]
First quarter pay hierarchy suggests American banks still pay more. Generally, they also pay a LOT more cash
Now that we know how much JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Credit Suisse and Deutsche have accrued for their investment bankers in the first quarter, we can say two things. 1. American banks pay more (with the exception of Deutsche, whose pay per head figures for the corporate and investment bank aren’t comparable because, unlike elsewhere, [...]
UBS M&A bankers should be afraid: today’s results give Andrea Orcel a licence to clean them out
It’s UBS Q1 results day. Amidst the high own-debt charge, the falling compensation, the falling headcount, the ok performances in FICC (except in rates) and equities, one thing stands out: M&A has done very badly. UBS even admits as much. “Advisory revenues decreased 33% to CHF 169 million from CHF 254 million, as our market [...]
GUEST COMMENT: As a junior corporate financier I am spending my life tweaking PowerPoint presentations
Many young undergraduates harbour dreams of becoming an investment banker when they finish university, but few know what the job entails. Those who know the reality have probably done an internship in the sector, be it in ECM, DCM or M&A. Some of these people have continued to bite the bullet and become full-fledged analysts, [...]
This is what recruiters say is really happening to hiring and when they suggest you succumb to desperation
What is the true state of financial services recruitment? Our analysis earlier today suggested a mere 20% of FICC professionals who lost their jobs in the second half of 2011 have found new ones. Financial News reported yesterday that only 11% of recently redundant RBS staff are back in work. Our own stats suggest UK [...]
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