Australian bankers unrattled by London attacks

Australian finance workers are not being scared away from the City of London after the recent terrorist attacks, but if incidents continue, that could change.

Australian recruitment firms say the thousands of Australian employees and contractors who live and work in the City are staying put after the terrorist attacks of July 7 and July 21.

Jon Michel, managing director of Jon Michel Executive Search, a Sydney and Melbourne-based executive search firm, says Australian finance staff remain confident of their prospects in London. "I've just got back from the UK," he says, "I talked to a lot of Australians and Kiwis over there and the general impression was that work was going well and the market had picked up."

Elizabeth Roberts, associate director at Michael Page International, says there's no sign of Ozzies canceling planned working holidays in London banks: "The collective view is it can happen anywhere so you can't stop your plans," she says.

Roberts says a few people have come back to Sydney recently and mentioned that London isn't a pleasant place to work at the moment. But she says this wasn't their primary motivation for coming back: more significant was the urge to come back for the summer.

Similarly, Michel says most people coming back to Sydney now are doing so because it's seen as a better place to raise children, regardless of the terrorist threat. However, he says if there are further attacks this could change at the end of the year after bonuses are paid.

"After September 11 a lot of people were saying, 'We're getting out of here, this is crazy,' " he says. "If there's a sustained bombing campaign in London we might see the same thing here. But at the moment people are half way through a good year and they're hardly going to rush to the airport if they're sitting on a 100,000 bonus."