Morning Coffee: Research confirms the best finance job for people looking for short hours and high pay

It's the perennial question - where should you work in finance if you want moderate hours and immoderate pay? We attempted to answer it a few months ago and suggested you might want to try equity capital markets, fund accounting, captive fund management or simply work for a French bank. Now Financial News has asked the same question and come up with a similar answer. If you want short hours in finance, fund management is the place to be.

Financial News asked asset management professionals how long they worked. Most of them said they had a very respectable 40-50 hours per week. Only 16% of asset managers said they worked more than 60 hours a week. By comparison 39% of corporate finance, sales or trading professionals said they worked more than 60 hours a week and 9% of front office bankers said they worked 80-100 hours a week. One banking respondent complained that, “I am so tired that I question myself frequently as to whether or not I could do something else.”

Financial News' survey didn't cover pay, but senior fund managers can easily earn six figures without exhausting themselves.Even better, and as we pointed out last week, fund managers are busy hiring. 

 

Meanwhile:

Goldman Sachs once offered to pay $3m to hire Tom Hayes, the ex-UBS trader at the centre of the LIBOR scandal. Hayes would have joined as an MD. (WSJ)

Analysts have reduced their earnings estimates for the 5 biggest Wall Street banks by $1bn. (Financial Times) 

If you share your trading ideas you will be driven towards ego-based trading & investing. (Kirk Report) 

UK might have to contribute €7bn towards a €50bn EU bank bail-out fund. (Telegraph)

International banks aren’t very interested in Shanghai. (Financial Times) 

Why bankers are loose canons who must never talk to the press unassisted. (Guardian) 

How long before Brady Dougan resigns? (Finews) 

What successful people do in the first hour of the day. (FastCompany)