Indian talent doesn't travel
Banks are busily building teams to assemble pitch books and conduct research in India. But that doesn't meant they're open to hiring Indians in London.
"We get a couple of hundred CVs a month from India," says one London recruiter. "The people there are really well educated and smart, but generally we can't help them out."
Earlier this year, it emerged that Merrill Lynch had invested US$11m in Copal Partners, an Indian company which helps assemble pitch books and provides research. Deutsche Bank and Citi are also among the banks thought to be using the services of Indians to do corporate finance grunt work.
The recruiter we spoke to says Copal Partners is one of the main sources of CVs coming out of India: "We get a lot of people saying they do analysis for Morgan Stanley, and they'd like to do the same thing in London."
Few banks are willing to hire people with experience of working in Indian servicing companies, however. "I don't know what it is," says the recruiter. "They're all very good, but banks just won't go there."
As an alternative, he advises Indian candidates to get a job for banks themselves in India and transfer internally to the UK, or to work for one of the Big Four accountancy firms in London and then apply to banking.
