The five great reemployment hopes of the 200 investment bankers let go from RBS
As we reported yesterday, RBS is making redundancies. It's getting rid of 200 people from its 1,000 person 'corporate and advisory team.'
What will they do next? Where will they go? RBS isn't exactly known as a great advisory house: in the first quarter of 2011 it ranked 17th for UK M&A according to Thomson Reuters, down from 14th in the first quarter of 2010. More promisingly, it ranked 11th globally for debt issuance, but it was outside the top 20 for EMEA ECM.
Nevertheless, there are alternative employment possibilities out there. Headhunters point out that some of the RBS bankers are still quite desirable; some even came with ABN AMRO.
If you're one of the people ejected from RBS, or if you're simply curious about their options, here's where we understand the hopes of reemployment lie.
1) RBS
Just because RBS is getting rid of 200 people from its corporate finance and advisory business, that doesn't mean it doesn't want them elsewhere.
We understand that, in reality, only half of the 200 people being ejected from RBS will need to find completely new employers: the other half will be redeployed internally. Whether this will mean accepting a cashier's job in Barnstaple is not clear, however.
2) DC Advisory Partners
The old Close Brothers business which was bought by Daiwa in summer 2009 is also said to be hiring.
It lost a few people earlier this year, has just hired some German MDs and apparently wants to hire another 3-5 managing directors in M&A before the end of the year. Its website also proclaims a need for associates with a few years' experience.
3) SocGen
SocGen is still hiring investment bankers! As we mentioned in May, it wants to be among the top 10 European M&A advisors by 2015, has already hired lots of senior people, and wants to hire more.
We suspect that it's also hiring experienced and inexperienced juniors: in our recent interview with SocGen's senior graduate recruiter, she said M&A is an area of junior hiring focus for the bank this year.
Headhunters say SocGen's senior M&A hiring is now dwindling slightly and that anyone interested in working there needs to get in on the game very soon. "These are specific searches and they are drawing towards their conclusion," says one.
4) Citigroup
Citigroup is also keen to bolster its European relationship management and IBD roster and may possibly contemplate people coming out of RBS. Whether Citi will be keen on ex-RBS bankers may be questionable, however. So far, it seems to have mostly picked up people with experience of large cap deals from the likes of Morgan Stanley and
5) JPMorgan
Given that a lot of the people coming out of RBS are likely to have a corporate banking background, they may want to get in touch with JPMorgan.
JPMorgan has already hired 50 corporate bankers globally this year, and it wants another 40 in Europe by December. That could be nearly half the RBS leavers re-housed already.
