America - not Asia, looks like the best place for banking jobs now

If you want a highly paid front office job in investment banking, your best bet today does not look like Hong Kong, China or Singapore, but Wall Street and São Paulo.

Figures from financial services research firm Coalition suggest that front office banking jobs have fallen on every continent since 2010, but that they have fallen least in the Americas. As we have reported on several occasions, the Asian banking landscape is increasingly arid. By comparison, sectors like M&A have been booming in the US and banks like Goldman Sachs have been building up in Brazil. 

Market trends have played out in hiring. Front office headcount in investment banks has fallen 15% globally since 2010 according to Coalition. In Europe, it said the Middle East and Africa headcount fell 21% over the same period. In the Asia Pacific (APAC) region it fell 13%. And in the Americas it fell 'only' 12%.

In 2012, Coalition said banks cut front office headcount by 12% in APAC, compared to a cut of just 8% in America.

Source: Coalition

Coalition is owned by data provider Standard & Poors. A spokeswoman for the company said their figures are conceived from research and data in the public domain, and are validated by analysts in each bank who confirm the numbers.