Actually, there are still front office jobs, it's just that no one wants to pay guarantees
It's the summer, and as we have variously pointed out, there's not much in the way of hiring in the front office.
This doesn't mean, however, that there's absolutely nothing in the way of hiring in the front office.
This week has in fact seen some perspiration-inducing levels of recruitment activity. Hence, UBS has hired an entire FX algorithmic team from Barclays, Citigroup's hired a new head of EMEA ECM and six other people, and Evercore's hired 10 equity researchers (although possibly not all in the past seven days).
Moreover, we have it on good authority that there are other areas where organisations would really quite like to hire in the coming months. These include:
1) BarCap, in equities
2) RBS, in equities
3) Citigroup, in equities
4) Citigroup, in M&A
5) Source (the specialist ETF provider) in sales and relationship management
6) Goldman in ETFs (possibly)
The only problem with all these hiring aspirations is that in the current climate no one's really willing to stump up the cash required to buy people out from now on.
"RBS want to hire in equities, but they're only willing to pay base salaries," alleges one equities headhunter. "This means they're either picking up good people who are out of the market, or giving a nod and a wink on the potential bonus. But because they're usually not willing to offer anything in writing, there's really not much candidate interest."
