As credit hiring booms in Asia, pay is being bid-up 50%

As we noted earlier this month, credit sales and trading hiring in Asia is booming this year. One senior credit trader in the region says he can't remember the last time there was much going on. "It's a hiring frenzy," he declares. 

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We detailed 30 participants in the frenzy earlier this month, including the ANZ team who are joining Standard Chartered, Jeff Leung, the head of flow credit trading for greater China at BNP Paribas in Hong Kong, who's gone to Goldman Sachs and Redha Achour, the head of investment grade credit trading for APAC at RBC Capital Markets, who's gone to Citadel Securities. 

It turns out there are more. Vivian Li, the head of credit research at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, has gone to Jefferies. And there have been at least nine moves on the buy-side, including Nitin Tuteja (Balyasny to Millennium) and Celia Yan, Blackrock's APAC head of private credit, who's off to Apollo. 

Headhunters and traders say the hiring frenzy has been triggered by rapidly expanding primary issuance in Asia. The South China Morning Post observed this week that US dollar bond sales from Asia-Pacific issuers have reached US$49bn this month, their highest level since 2021. "It's heating up and there are opportunities," says one credit trading MD. 

As hiring takes off, the MD says pay in the Asian credit market is also levitating. "People are definitely being bid up, anything from 20% to 50%," he claims. The biggest bids are at the junior end, where the amounts are smaller.

Not everyone concurs that pay rises are easy to come by, though. One Singapore credit headhunter tells us they're only on offer to the select few. 

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