eFinancialCareers

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 According to research firm Dealogic, withdrawn IPOs hit a record high of $13.1bn globally last month.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

Restructurers are definitely a) busy, and b) getting busier. Some of them even appear to be hiring. But do they want investment bankers, or anyone who can impart distressed debt wisdom? That’s down to who you speak to. In most cases, the unfortunate answer appears to be “No”. “We tend to hire people with accounting or legal experience, or with prior experience of dealing with insolvency,” says Paul Davies of... Read more

Despite posting the second biggest loss (£691m) in UK banking history, analysts say Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is unlikely to make any more redundancies than those already expected from the integration of ABN Amro’s capital markets division. This morning, RBS posted a pre-tax loss of £691m during the first half of this year after being pounded by sub-prime losses of £5.9bn. Sir Fred Goodwin, chief executive of RBS, said it had... Read more

Dubai might be grabbing the headlines for luring Western bankers to the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia is desperate to sway talent over its borders. Saudi has slowly been opening its doors to foreign investments and international investment banks, and the influx of new players has placed pressure on an already strained talent pool. Ian Thomas, head of international recruitment at Banque Saudi Fransi, a joint venture with Crédit Agricole... Read more

FSA chief Hector Sants has come out of the closet and said bonuses should be taken into account when assessing banks’ risk. But we'd like to point out that it wasn’t his idea. Sants seems to have latched onto a notion first aired by Alchemy Partners’ founder Jon Moulton last week. So how does Jon think the plan Sants has pilfered from him would work? “I presume you’d... Read more

There were lots more redundancies last week. Everyone from managing directors (Morgan Stanley) to associates (UBS) felt the steel. Bear Stearns continued to feel the pain of integration with JPMorgan. Reuters said JP has made job offers to only 6,000 of Bear’s 14,000 staff. Dealbreaker said they were being offered less than they got at Bear. JPMorgan was also said to be closing or spinning off most of Bear’s... Read more

The latest piece of research from Morgan McKinley doesn’t make great reading if you’re trying to find a new job. According to the recruitment company’s latest monthly missive, there are now 2,900 more bankers looking for jobs than there are jobs to be had. Unsurprisingly, given the circumstances, the average banking salary is down 5% year on year, while senior banking salaries are down nearly 10%. The... Read more

It’s down to regulators to reform the bonus system. And given regulators are powerless to intervene, reform looks as likely as a small village in Hampshire becoming the financial centre of the UK. Regulators are certainly making scary noises. From Mervyn King’s anti-bonus diatribe, to Sir Callum McCarthy’s call for banks to emphasise long-term performance, snarls and grunts about bonuses have been emanating from the regulatory corner for several months.... Read more

It was a good week for hedge funds – unless you were GLG. Banks were still busily lopping staff, although there were rays of hiring in commodities and – strangely enough – leveraged finance. Hedge funds provided reasons to be cheerful. Hedge Fund Research predicted investors plan to pour $200bn into hedge funds this year. ICAP launched an African hedge fund. It emerged that the replica hedge funds... Read more

The latest missive from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) predicts bonuses will fall 40% in 2008, and won’t reach last year’s levels until 2011. It's all down to business levels. A research note issued this week by Morgan Stanley predicted revenues in M&A and capital markets will fall 50% this year, which is bad news when combined with the evaporation of structured credit businesses. “The crash in... Read more

Will an MBA really do wonders for your banking career, asks George Trower, our resident columnist and banker under cover. The MBA is much maligned. Despite that fact, MBAs are being pumped out in greater and greater numbers and firms are lapping them up offering higher and higher pay packages. In my own experience, a business school gives you all of the following and more: 1. A... Read more

At the risk of being eviscerated and dunked in a vat of scalding Asti Spumante (now that Bollinger’s out of reach), it’s time to say the unthinkable: bankers who find themselves suddenly unable to service enormous mortgage payments have only themselves to blame. The Times last week produced an anecdotal portrait of a new phenomenon – the ‘poor banker’ with a £700k interest-only mortgage acquired in the go-go year of... Read more

OK, this may be wishful thinking given there aren't a huge number of jobs to move into in the current market (unless, of course, you work in custody or FX), but a Wall Street Journal reader has shared a useful-ish insight on how to play the banking job market if you want to ensure you never end up watching Cash in the Attic. According to the anonymous '$' (commenting at... Read more

RBS’ rights issue is big business for the FIG bankers who get to work on it. It won’t do much for other ECM types though. This morning, RBS finally came out of the closet and confirmed it’s contemplating raising £10bn to help shore up a balance sheet depleted by the acquisition of ABN AMRO and an alleged £7bn of writedowns. Salad days are definitely coming for the financial institutions group (FIG)... Read more

The latest prognostication from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) doesn’t make for pleasant reading. The Centre, an economics think tank which produces regular forecasts about everything from jobs and bonuses to military spending, says it made a mistake. Having previously forecast that 7,000 City jobs would be shed this year, the CEBR has now amended its predictions. Due to the persistence of the credit crunch, it now thinks... Read more