eFinancialCareers

The old cliché another day another dollar seems to be one that doesn’t apply to my new role. It’s been just over a week and I’m yet to deal with any risk-related disasters. It’s going to require patience, but I do at least have the space to investigate other opportunities. I’ve had a number of conversations with people I’ve worked with who are in the midst of “setting up a fund.”... Read more

The great distressed debt revenue/hiring boom still doesn’t seem to have materialised, but is (surely) coming very soon. Last week, Fitch came out with the sort of prognosis that should make any serious distressed debt professional salivate: the coming wave of defaults could be the most severe on record. Unsurprisingly, various people are readying funds, including Alchemy Partners, Franklin Templeton, GAM (a fund of funds) and LNG Capital. ... Read more

Ex-ABS bankers are starting to look desperate. Year-to-date US ABS issuance is running at just 27% of last year’s, according to JPMorgan, and estimates suggest that 90% of this year’s securitizations in Europe have been retained by issuers or used as collateral at the European Central Bank, rather than sold to clients. Desperate times call for desperate measures. One headhunter says he knows of a former ABS professional who’s... Read more

More colour is emerging on the nature of the package being offered by Nomura to Lehman staff in London – and it looks very generous indeed. According to a totally anonymous (and possibly spurious) commentator on an earlier article, senior Lehman staff moving across to the Japanese bank are being offered two-year guaranteed bonuses based on the packages they received in 2007. Headhunters give credence to the rumours. Bonuses for 2008... Read more

Despite being staffed by some of the best in their business, it seems Lehman’s European fixed income units may be shunned by the bank’s buyers. At the moment, it looks like Nomura will soon be the new owner of Lehman’s European investment banking and equities units. Failing this, Barclays Capital is also said to be waiting in the wings, with a view to bolting on Lehman's equities arm. Lehman employs/employed around 5,000... Read more

Dresdner Kleinwort bankers may be quaking in their Church's, but some people can still count on a relatively secure future. And they are... Finance and risk professionals While everyone was on the beach last month, Financial Services Authority chief exec Hector Sants called for banks not to slash too many middle and back office staff because “Firms' valuation processes and controls have become increasingly stretched and in some cases... 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

One year ago today the credit crunch entered popular vocabulary with the meltdown of two of Bear Stearns’ hedge funds. Twelve months on, newspapers remain full of speculation as to when it will come to a close. One article, in the Economist was written anonymously by a risk manager at a bank explaining the enormous failings that lead to the writedowns of the past 12 months. The tone of the... Read more

For a very parochial and distinctly conservative segment of the European securitization sector, covered bonds are doing well out of the credit crisis. According to analysts at Barclays Capital, covered bond issuance in the first half of 2008 was two thirds of its level in 2007, which they point out isn’t at all bad given the ‘state of the global money and capital markets.’ Even more excitingly, it now looks... Read more

It seems Bar Cap has now made all the job cuts flagged up a few months ago, and surprise, surprise, the bulk of them appear to have fallen in structured credit. According to one headhunter, the bank’s London-based CMBS and corporate securitisation teams have gone from around 85 to 20 people. A banker let go from the CMBS team confirms these numbers are roughly correct, but says some of the ex-securitisation... Read more

The lack of liquidity in credit markets means mezzanine funds, which fill the gap between equity debt and traditional bank loans, are hot. But the bad news for anyone hoping to find work in the sector is that they’re not doing a lot of hiring. In a measure of the health of the mezz market, private equity firm Octopus Investments says it’s seen at least twice as many companies... Read more

Barclays Capital is said to have trimmed 20 people from its leveraged finance team (Independent), Citi is said to have cut its team in half (Private Equity Online), JPMorgan’s said to have chopped leveraged financiers in New York (Dealbreaker) and probably in London, and there’s been heavy trimming at ABN AMRO (Bloomberg). If you’re one of these people, or if you’re a leveraged financier working elsewhere and fear you might... Read more

SocGen’s pinched Michel Peretie, Merrill’s pinched Fares D. Noujaim, and at least two Bear bankers (Jeff Mayer and Craig Overlander) are sufficiently confident of their own desirability to turn down Jamie Dimon’s offer of employment. Could it be that Bear Stearns had some pretty good people on its books? Off the record, one senior JPMorgan banker in Europe says there were a few, but that most of Bear’s talented staff... Read more

Seems unlikely. In fact, seems very, very unlikely. The likelihood of Barclays making an imminent move on either Lehman – or, even more improbably, UBS – is roughly equivalent to the chance that roads will be clear on Bank Holiday Monday. The main reason for scepticism is that Barclays can’t afford it. “Before it makes any acquisitions, Barclays’ first port of call is capital raising,” says James Hudson, an... 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

While all other bubbles have burst, investors are still hurling money at infrastructure. Rumour has it there are even jobs to be had in the sector. Predictably, however, you’ll need infrastructure experience to be in with a chance of landing one. Recruiters in the sector say there are more than 50 infrastructure-related vacancies in London now. “Infrastructure hiring isn’t as unsustainable as leveraged finance hiring was during the... Read more