How much am I worth?vice president, Asian equities sales

A panel of headhunters give their assessment of typical London pay packages: vice-president, Asian equities sales, leading international institution: salary 90,000 (€135,000) bonus highly variable, often about 30%

When is a recovery not really a recovery? When confidence returns and institutions start making serious money again, yet this fails to translate into new jobs or indeed, significantly higher bonuses.

According to some headhunters, this is exactly what is happening in the Asian equities market. After some dire years, with the Asia crisis followed sharply by the slump in global equities and the global economic slowdown, things are definitely beginning to move again out east.

Prices are cheap and the buying interest certainly seems to be there. Indeed, Hong Kong has been buoyant; South Korea - despite recently losing some shine - has been interesting; China -which proved resilient through much of the recent downturn - is also performing well, whilst the ASEAN countries (including the TIP countries of Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines) have started to recover. And yet...

'We haven't yet seen the recovery in recruitment that we saw after other pick-ups in market activity,' said Emma Weir of Eban, adding that the buy-side in particular remains uncertain. 'The funds under management have diminished considerably over the past few years and that seems to have hit confidence,' she adds.

What seems to have happened is that the extent and duration of the downturn has made institutions wary. When before they would consider stepping up recruitment of equity salesmen, say three months into a recovery, now, some nine months into it, they are still holding back as if they cannot believe that the pick up in business is for real. Even for VPs already in situ, this is bad news.

'Funds invested are smaller than (elsewhere) and therefore commissions and potential remuneration tend to lag their major market counter parts,' said Simon Vaughan-Edwards of Alexander Mann Global Markets.

Headhunters stress that despite all this, remuneration levels vary widely from institution to institution. There is broad agreement that basic salaries currently hover at or around the 90,000 level - seldom rising above 120,000 although VPs long in situ may have negotiated more - but bonuses can be anywhere between zero to 100%. The consensus is that bonuses tend to be a modest percentage and certainly not a multiple of basic.

So how do VPs improve on this situation? Headhunters stress that although Asian equity salesmen are never going to get paid as well as their counterparts in US or European markets, the outlook is not all bad. The best paid - as ever- are those with the best and most productive client relationships - especially those with strong relationships within the major structured accounts. However those with expertise or a good track record in derivatives or hedge funds will also be paid more than pure equity salesmen.

If the recent recovery in Asian markets holds - and most market commentators seem to believe it will - bonuses will start to pick-up; recruitment will probably also rise as it finally dawns on institutions that the bad days really are past.

<i<Figures and commentary from Eban and Alexander Mann Global Markets