Downsizing and Hiring Under One Roof
A recent burst of mass layoffs from Canadian securities firms coincides with continued opportunistic hiring by those same firms.
The Globe and Mail reports that Canaccord Capital announced a 10 percent staff cut last Thursday - eliminating 170 jobs mainly involving support roles. Yet Canacord recently hired two senior ex-JPMorgan bankers to run its fixed-income business, as well as making other hires in New York from JPMorgan and in Britain from Iceland's failed Landesbanki, the newspaper says.
Similarly, RBC Dominion Securities reportedly laid off 24 health care bankers and analysts and other staff two weeks ago. Not long ago, the company hired an 11-member team to sell U.S. stocks to clients in Europe. RBC also has hired bankers from UBS and Citigroup.
And San Francisco-based Thomas Weisel Partners, which numbers Toronto and Calgary among it 14 worldwide locations, announced 60 more layoffs last week, bringing its cumulative total this year to 27 percent of the workforce. But it's also picked up at least four senior bankers from UBS, Lehman and JPMorgan.
The hires have a distintly "opportunistic" flavor, pegged to the relatively recent emergence of talent with bulge-bracket pedigrees available at what's seen as bargain-basement prices.
Thomas Weisel's president openly likened his firm's stragegy to that of a sports team making trades to upgrade its roster. "It's kind of like trading away people because you know you're not going to win this season to get really good draft picks in order to rebuild for two seasons from now," Lionel Conacher told the Globe and Mail.
Even for coveted hires, compensation is being closely tied to actual production, with no guarantees.
The story also says that both Thomas Weisel and Canaccord have actually cut base pay for undefined "senior workers" by 10 percent or more, following the example set by Toronto-based rival GMP Securities.
