eFinancialCareers

Lloyds TSB seems to have grasped the nettle when it comes to offshoring IT roles, to the extent that it's actually bringing Indian technology contractors to the UK at the expense of local roles. Understandably, it's incurred the wrath of the unions, but it is really that unique?Last week, it emerged that Lloyds was introducing a blanket 15% rate cut for its UK IT contractors, and now the Lloyds TSB... Read more

London may now have the weather of a warm place in the southern hemisphere, but it does not have trees full of mangos, beaches, or cheap beer. Nor does it have enough financial services jobs to accommodate everyone who lost theirs in the past 24 months.Given this state of affairs, there's something to be said for moving somewhere cheap and warm for a while. As you may recollect, the head of... Read more

Heidi Moore has got an interesting article in the BigMoney on the possibility that banks will indeed pay pleasing bonuses this year. According to Moore, banks may be reverting to their old addiction to mortgage backed securities to boost profitablity.By way of evidence, she points to Bloomberg figures suggesting banks are hoarding $154.6bn in mortgage securities on their balance sheets, up 5.6% from April. The rationale for this behaviour is apparently the (increasingly... Read more

The merger between Watson Wyatt and Towers Perrin to create the world's biggest pay, benefits and investment benefits consultancy has understandably created something of a stir in the industry this week. The firms are looking to save $80m in "synergies", which is going to involve some job cuts due to overlaps, so how will this affect the UK operations?On the face of it, it's a match made in heaven. In... Read more

Everybody knows that the jobs market is extremely competitive at the moment but thinking outside the box when it comes to your job search could go a long way in helping you to secure that role.Recently, Morgan McKinley conducted a survey of 600 UK finance professionals who are currently job hunting. We found that a third (34%) said they would relocate to secure their next career move. In addition to... Read more

Hiring may have resumed at a senior level, but it's not much consolation to financial services recruiters who've spent the past 18 months struggling for survival. In the absence of a widespread return to recruitment, many are now opting for consolidation.In the past few weeks, Korn Ferry has betrothed itself to Whitehead Mann, and Hanover Search & Selection has done the deed with Napier Scott.Future spin offs may yet include Correlate Executive Search... Read more

If one phrase explains why banks got into so much trouble in the early noughties, it’s Chuck Prince’s assertion that Citigroup was “still dancing" in July 2007 despite the arrhythmic beat which left it with a nosebleed and as much as $3 trillion in nasty off-balance sheet assets.  Why did Citigroup keep on head banging? The simple answer is that its competitors were head banging too, and making big profits in... Read more

As we pointed out a few weeks ago, all things being equal to the first quarter, bonuses at Goldman Sachs should reach $675k this year. After conferring with various analysts, the Wall Street Journal appears to have reached a similar conclusion. It says Goldman’s on track to pay out around $700k per person this year, and that Morgan Stanley will pay around $340k. Both amounts are close to, or equal,... Read more

Hedge funds are suddenly doing ok: returns are up, redemptions are down and they’ve had the best start to the year in a decade. Unfortunately this does not mean that they will be paying large bonuses.Following closely on from last year’s disastrous performance, many hedge funds are still below the high water mark at which they can charge the 20% performance fees that become bonuses. Deprived of these, they’re having... Read more

When Lehman collapsed and pre-existing notions of reality proved badly wrong, the algorithmic traders who built models based on those notions suddenly became a lot less popular. Now that the world’s become more predictable, they’re hot again. Last month Anshu Jain, global head of markets and joint head of investment banking at Deutsche, told Euromoney that algorithmic trading was helping the bank reduce spreads and capture market share. Similarly, Dixit Joshi,... Read more

Mervyn King has weighed in on the bonus debate. The guvnor says big payouts have encouraged too many talented people to squander their lives in banking when they could have been doing something more constructive instead. King made his comments to the Treasury Select Committee. According to the Telegraph, King says young people look at City compensation packages and think they “dominate almost any other type of career ... It's... Read more

As a headhunter, I am a parasite who will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. I know this to be true, since Geraint Anderson, the former Dresdner analyst now known to be City Boy, says so. It's the latest of many attacks upon my profession. Are we really that bad? Yes. How do I know? Well, at the Global Derivatives & Risk Management conference in Paris, our... Read more

I'm going to retire before I'm 30. I'm currently 25, and since graduating from Cambridge in 2004 I've already earned over £1m after tax, and have paid off the mortgage on a flat in South Kensington and country house in Surrey. Even in this new world we enter of deferred bonuses, lower payouts and tighter municipal regulation, I'm still absolutely convinced I'll have retired within five years. When I first said... Read more

With jobs harder to come by, bankers are behaving badly towards recruiters and headhunters, who are suddenly unable to slot them into comfortable new positions. “We’re starting to get a lot of angry emails,” says one structured credit headhunter. “Bankers are approaching us and questioning why we can’t place them in hedge funds or commodities businesses. They’re venting their spleens, but there just aren’t the jobs.” “Candidates are more rude... Read more

Quants are at the centre of the vortex as banks go down the plughole, with some feeling pretty sorry for themselves. Much of the collapse in morale is down to Quanting being a young profession: most have never been personally affected by a recession before. When Paul Wilmott started teaching Quant finance at Oxford in the 1990s, it was an obscure specialisation. Quants are part of the furniture But although the... Read more

You may not like recruiters. You may think that they are like estate agents or journalists. You may even accuse them of being parasites. But if you want a new job, it’s counterproductive to antagonize them and productive to get them on your side. Here’s how to do it: • Put yourself in their shoes All the recruiters we spoke to would like to point out that they make their money... Read more

So, let me get this straight. In simplistic terms: 1. Shanice, a single mother of four (by four different fathers) from Alabama who has never had a job in her life, is granted a $180,000 loan for by a mortgage broker spiv for her first home, in true 'American Dream' fashion. 2. Mortgage-broking spiv mis-sells such applicants to lenders, as ifShanice actually has a hope in hell of paying off her... Read more

New entrants looking to break into the ultra-competitive fund management industry have a significant obstacle in their path: the notoriously difficult Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) programme. The professional qualification comes in three parts, takes four years to complete, and 80% of candidates fall before the final hurdle. Moreover, as more people take the exams, CFA insiders say the pass rate is bound to fall. A total of 119,000 candidates... Read more