European banks play programmer catch-up

As the equities markets recoup in London, investment banks are actively hiring technical specialists to bring outdated systems up-to-date.

In 2000 and 2001 when the markets were down, banks wanted to hire people with all-round skills, staff who could work in C , Java, or C# programming languages who also had a very good understanding of the business.

Paul Thoma, who manages the permanent division of Project Partners, a recruiting firm, says, 'Banks wanted to hire people whose skills overlapped development, business analysis, and for senior people, some skills in project management, which is the natural progression for a business analyst.'

Now, though, many of the big European banks are just looking for programmers, and pure technical skills are sufficient; they don't have to be experts in the business unlike the CIO.

'Hiring is almost getting back to the levels where we were in the late 1990s or early 2000,' says Thoma. Banks have been making money for the last 18 months, so now they can afford to restart development projects that they had halted when profits dropped. Technologists who had left the City of London and taken jobs in other areas, such as teaching, are coming back to work for the banks.

'We can find them,' says Thoma. 'When they hear the market is buoyant again a lot of people who have gone to give something back to society are interested in trying to give something back to themselves.'

Those who want to earn more than they were making when they left could be disappointed, however. Many, though, have kept skills up-to-date through independent consulting, clubs, or teaching, and salaries for those programmers who have kept a hand in will run 40,000-100,000 (€58,000-€144,000) with total compensation of between 50,000 and 150,000.

While the equities markets were down, banks focused on derivatives and left their equities trading systems alone. Now some European banks realize they have fallen behind the American firms on their equities desks and are launching big projects to catch up.

Thoma sees a lot of work beginning in automated trading of cash equities where big American firms such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have taken their traders' knowledge and created trading strategies that can be plugged into a trading system. When traders have an order to execute, they can choose a strategy and let the computer run the trades.

'The European and Japanese banks have fallen behind, so now they are bringing in really good people to develop their trading systems and strategy,' Thoma says. 'The rumour is that if you aren't doing auto trading successfully, then you will be forced out of the cash equities markets; banks are looking for people who can add value through hands-on technical skills rather than business knowledge.'

How to get a job? Use all the contacts you have. 'When the banks weren't making so much money, they became very reliant on internal resources and direct applications to keep recruitment costs low,' says Thoma. 'If you worked in the City before, call your friends or even friends of friends, and look at the web sites.'