Redundant bankers widen hunt overseas

Linda Jackson, managing consultant at Penna Meridian, the outplacement firm, says employees are increasingly looking for work wherever they can find it. This time last year only one or two people on the firm's books were actively looking at jobs just about anywhere in the world. This year, the number is nearer 100.

Graham Hurley, a Wall Street IT expert, is one of them. He says: 'Manhattan is saturated with people who have been displaced from a good job. I lost mine in January it never occurred to me that I would still be looking in June.

'I'm not prepared to jump at the first thing I see, but if the right job comes along I am now prepared to work absolutely anywhere.'

Hurley has been job-hunting in London and Paris, where he believes he will find employers more receptive than in New York. Wall Street made a huge number of redundancies after September 11 and has been slow to reinstate people, he says. The perception in Manhattan is that Europe is picking up faster.

Unfortunately, that perception may be wrong. Rupert Channing, a managing partner in London at the global headhunter Heidrick and Struggles, says: 'Europe's problems are just as acute as Wall Street's. It is by no means any cosier here.'

Hurley would be better off looking further east. Toby Crosthwaite, a consultant with the headhunter Sheffield Haworth in Hong Kong, says: 'Greater China' and South Korea is where the activity is.'

Mike Brennan, managing director of the headhunter Alexander Mann Global Markets in Asia, agrees. 'Hiring activity is focused on Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China,' he says.

Bankers with strong industry or product experience have the most transferable skills, headhunters say. Telecoms, FIG, ECM and utility specialists are among those expatriates who have found work. In Korea, equity derivatives experts and securitisation experts have been in demand as markets are deregulated.

But much of this movement comes through banks transferring existing staff to Asia, rather than hiring externally. Crosthwaite says: 'Over the past nine to 12 months banks have become very good at moving people about. A lot of people from London and New York have been redeployed.' Other headhunters cite JP Morgan and Rothschild as examples.

Western bankers must also compete with local rivals. AIMR, the organisation that runs the globally recognised CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exams, says numbers taking the exam in the region have soared.

Enrolments in China rose from 400 candidates in 2001 to more than 1,600 this year. In South Korea, candidate numbers rose from 3,000 to more than 5,400. South Korea is now the fourth-biggest CFA centre globally.

Brennan says: 'The hottest market is for Western-educated Koreans, or for Westerners with prior exposure to Korean markets.'

Meanwhile, the number of Westerners willing to work in Asia is greater than ever before, Crosthwaite says. Bonuses are traditionally often low there. But with bonuses low everywhere at the moment, this is not quite the problem it was two years ago.

Southeast Asia is in the job market doldrums, however, say headhunters. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Société Générale and Cazenove are among the banks that have scaled back some of their activities in countries such as Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Redundancies mean that luxury flats once occupied by ex-pats in Singapore now stand empty. However, both SG and Crédit Agricole have started rebuilding in selected areas in Asia.

In other parts of the world, opportunities are also few and far between. But those that exist are well worth considering. Philip Marsden, head of financial services at the headhunter Whitehead Mann, says today's rising stars could be better off heading for outposts such as Johannesburg than staying in London or New York. They have less chance of being made redundant there, he says.

For those who have already lost their jobs, the French Riviera looks as good a place to network as any.

One headhunter says that many senior bankers have given up looking for a job until markets pick up. 'The only place that's booming is the beach. That's where everyone is right now,' he says.