Here are the banks where hiring freezes aren't completely effective

As far as we were concerned, most banks have hiring freezes; even in the back and middle offices no one much was being recruited. Apparently not.

Recruiters tell us some banks have lifted their freezes a little. Others are claiming to have a hiring freeze, but have multiple roles to fill before the New Year. Please note, however, that these recruiters are focused on middle office and 'infrastructure' roles. Front office hiring really is mostly dead.

Lloyds and BarCap are said to be hiring for middle office roles. And so, according to the head of financial services at one large recruitment firm, are many others.

"Looking at our interview board, we've still got jobs to fill this year at BAML, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche and Standard Bank," she says. "RBS have released a few roles in the last couple of days and HSBC are inviting people to interview, but they tend to be a bit a slower anyway."

"Lloyds are definitely still hiring," says another senior middle office recruiter. "We're also finding that there are fewer freezes in insurance and asset management."

However, there are also reports of hiring freezes being imposed arbitrarily at some of the big US banks. "Citi put a freeze on its infrastructure roles a few weeks ago," says one senior infrastructure recruiter. "The same thing happened at JPMorgan.

"These things tend to come out of the blue," he added. "We had quite a few people with offers outstanding which were suddenly rescinded and those candidates were dropped."

Will people who had offers rescinded because of freezes be at the front of the recruitment queue when freezes are lifted? No. "There's no commitment from banks to pick these people up again next year," says the recruiter. "It's a lot of wasted work for us."