The City is awash with accounting jobs

Accountants aren't regarded as highly-excitable types, but even they may look up from their spreadsheets when they see what's happening in the hiring market.

There's something of a battle going on between investment banks for product controllers, financial controllers and regulatory accountants. At least that's the suggestion from recruiters Ambition UK (formerly Witan Jardine), who have pointed to "rapid growth" in the City jobs market since the start of 2010.

Ambition focus on operations, support and accounting jobs, and investment banks have been enthusiastically hiring the latter this year, says Neil Phillips, associate director for banking and finance at the recruiter.

"Banks are facing real difficulty recruiting for two-three year post-qualified accountants in product control, financial control and regulatory reporting roles," he says. "There's only a finite number of these people, therefore investment banks are either poaching from each other or considering the newly-qualified market."

A new found optimism

Ambition's predictions are hot on the trail of increasingly bullish statements on City hiring from recruiters, the latest of which comes from Morgan McKinley. It suggests that financial services vancacies increased by 21% in March and by 83% year-on-year. Astbury Marsden also believes that 53,000 vacancies are likely this year.

Nonetheless, other recruiters echo Ambition's comments on the elevated status of accountants in the City.

Simon Lindrea, a director at Michael Page Financial Services, says: "For the last two years during the crunch there was a much lower level of hiring of accountants across the financial services sector. Now we are faced with situations where individuals often have multiple job offers, buybacks and potential guarantees. However, whilst demand has increased significantly, it still hasn't reached the levels we saw in 2007."

In spite of this increased recruitment activity, there's little evidence of widespread movement in average salaries. Phillips says 2-3 year post-qualified accountants are still being offered around 60-70k base, which reiterates figures released by Michael Page towards then end of 2009.

However, the head of one financial services recruitment firm says one bank has been offering newly qualified accountants salaries of 62.5k this year, up from 60k maximum in 2009.