eFinancialCareers

Yesterday’s unnerving bonus revelations from UBS have become more unnerving still now that there’s been time to digest them. The Times reports that as part of the new malus system for recouping bonuses in the event of everything from losses (group or division), asset writedowns, personal misconduct and missed performance targets, it will soon be possible for UBS senior bankers and 'risk takers' to accrue a negative bonus balance. The... Read more

Laying off 52,000 staff sounds very, very bad. The Times points out that Citigroup’s move ranks as one of the biggest corporate culls in history – outdone only by IBM’s eradication of 60,000 in staff in 1993. However, there are a few palliatives for Citigroup’s poor employees. Prime among them is the fact that around 27,000 of the proposed headcount reductions are to come from failing to replace staff who leave,... Read more

When RBS announced its 3,000 redundancies last week, it was notable that none of them were expected to fall in its insurance businesses. This may, of course, be because it’s in the middle of trying to engineer a sale of Royal Bank of Scotland Insurance. Or it may be because, with the exception of AIG, insurers aren’t quite as badly impacted by the downturn as banks. Swiss Life, Vienna Insurance... Read more

Citigroup bankers who filed in to attend Vikram Pandit’s town hall presentation today, hoping for a few platitudes about how the bank has some of the most talented people in the industry, were sorely disappointed. Instead, Pandit announced another 50,000 redundancies on top of the 23,000 he's announced already this year. The Wall Street Journal quotes Citigroup chairman Win Bischoff, who told a separate Dubai business forum that all banks... Read more

UBS has taken a firsts step to doing away with the concept of annual bonuses. The Swiss bank today unveiled details of a new bonus scheme, under which ‘top executives’ will receive (at the very, very most) a third of each year’s bonus at the end of the year in question. The rest will be put aside and only awarded if the bank/employee performs well and behaves nicely in subsequent... Read more

Given that taxes and death are ineluctable certainties in any economic climate, jobs related to medicine and tax ‘massaging’ should be well placed to withstand any downturn. But while most bankers will struggle to quickly reinvent themselves as GPs, the secretive and lucrative world of tax structuring ought to be more accessible. Banks like Barclays Capital, Deutsche, and Morgan Stanley have some of the biggest tax teams in the... Read more

Bankers in RBS’s markets division have reason to be paranoid, given that around 3,000 of them will probably be eliminated before Christmas. However, along with employees at the bank's Scottish HQ, most FX and rates professionals should be ok. RBS is a big player in the FX arena, with a nearly 10% market share, according to Euromoney. The rates and FX business has also been performing relatively well: in the first... Read more

First came the news that RBS is cutting several thousand people from its global banking and markets division. Now it transpires that Citigroup is cutting 10,000 people from its investment bank and elsewhere. RBS is saying nothing about whether the redundancy rumours are true, or where the axe might fall, but Pesto was heard on the Today Progamme this morning saying that layoffs in the UK will be limited to... Read more

Hedge fund giant Man Group is set to double the amount it spends on technology going into 2009 and has employed contractors to carry out new projects. Does this mean that the hedge fund space could provide much-needed opportunities for IT contractors from other areas of finance? Sadly not…. In the second half of 2008, Man Group has spent $10m on technology, up from $6m in the first half of... Read more

How long before the likes of Korn/Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles start cutting staff? Both firms slashed headcount drastically in 2002 and 2003, but have resisted reductions so far this time around. Rumour has it that some consultants are starting to feel a bit twitchy. Heidrick looks like a particular candidate for trimming in its financial services arm. Its third-quarter results were favourable and Heidrick has reduced fixed... Read more

Morgan Stanley is following in the footsteps of Goldman Sachs and cutting another 10% of its staff. After making 4,400 redundancies in June, the US bank now plans to make another 10% of cuts in its institutional securities group, and 9% of people redundant in asset management. Financial News says Mack is cutting back on prime brokerage, proprietary trading, principal investing and commercial real estate origination, and building up in... Read more

Somewhere is hiring. Brewin Dolphin Investment Banking is officially looking for staff. Naturally, it is unwilling to talk numbers. Graeme Summers, head of investment banking at the firm, says hiring will be opportunistic, “depending on the quality and calibre of candidates”. The numbers involved are unlikely to make any impression on the thousands of people losing their jobs elsewhere: Brewin Dolphin employs just 60 people. Another five are definitely joining... Read more

The financial services employment market is getting worse, not better. The latest figures from the predominantly middle and back-office recruitment firm Morgan McKinley show the number of new job vacancies falling 9% between September and October. October vacancies were down 48% on the same month in 2007. Candidate vacancies fell at the same time (maybe because everyone's deciding to become a smallholder in the Outer Hebrides?), meaning competition for jobs hasn't... Read more

Until now, senior equity capital markets bankers have been largely spared annihilation. But with IPOs unlikely to recover any time soon, ECM teams are moving dangerously close to the killing zone. According to research firm Dealogic, withdrawn IPOs hit a record high of $13.1bn globally last month. Nor did preceding months provide much cheer – figures from Thomson Reuters suggest Europe is in the midst of the biggest IPO drought... Read more

Stung into action by Goldman’s falling share price, chief executive Lloyd Blankfein has come out fighting. According to Blankfein, Goldman’s transformation into a bank holding company will not stop it from “doing anything we have done as an investment bank”. For the record, he also points out that, “Some of the biggest opportunities this firm has had came from times of stress,” promises that he won’t be provoked into “doing... Read more

The state is hiring bankers, and not just for the new unit set up to handle the taxpayers’ contribution to the banking system. Financial services professionals who are on the street could also consider sending their CVs to the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA). The PADA may not have the profile of the new Treasury unit set up to handle taxpayers’ £37bn investment, but it does have jobs. Angela... Read more

As ever, it looks like banks have waited until Q4 before slashing headcount in a manner that in any way approximates to the fall in their revenues. So, if you’re one of the people let go in the months to come, will you have any right to a portion of this year’s bonus? Sadly, the answer is probably no. Despite a promising article in this week’s Financial News, which seems... Read more

Having exhausted their appetite for structured credit specialists, it seems banks are now opting for something a little less arcane: good old work-out experts who can help turn ailing businesses around. The Financial Times says banks’ commercial lending arms are shopping for the kinds of work-out experience more commonly found in private equity funds. The impetus appears to be debt for equity swaps, which could leave lenders holding equity in... Read more

The short answer would be very. IT budgets are facing double-digit reductions, more redundancies are on the cards, and projects are being put on ice. But… there are opportunities out there. Merrill Lynch, formerly Wall Street’s biggest tech spender at around $4bn annually, is set to slash technology headcount radically, and aims to save around $7bn through the Bank of America merger. And the effective elimination of Bear Stearns and... Read more

So you thought Lehman bankers left to twiddle their thumbs or pick up big guarantees over at Nomura? So did we, but according to an article in last weekend’s Financial Times, this is not necessarily so. The FT says that some of Lehman’s traders were retained by PwC to unwind its trading positions and that these lucky individuals received a ‘new pay package with a hefty bonus component if they... Read more