Financial job market news Netherlands | Finance news for recruitment in the financial markets

Investment strategy is crucial to a hedge fund’s success. Having unearthed someone capable of devising a good one, it might therefore seem inevitable that a fund will make them a full time employee. Not always. According to one hedge fund specialist headhunter, some funds are now willing to employ strategists on a freelance basis, and to allow them to reside many miles from the mother ship. “People are getting paid to... Read more

Banking is not the only industry where people receive bonuses. Bonuses are also offered in other professions. And in other professions there is no obligation to defer bonuses over multiple years, to claw them back, to base them on risk adjusted measures of performance, or to subject them to punitive forms of taxation. Then again, bonuses in other industries tend to be a lot lower. Bonuses in law firms Lawyers’... Read more

Daniel Palmer, the newly appointed head of international equity derivatives in global capital markets at Morgan Stanley is living embodiment of the notion that enormous and enduring guarantees don’t work. Palmer used to work at Morgan Stanley, back in the 1990s. However, Financial News says he left for HSBC in 2004, lured by a guarantee rumoured to be worth $15m over three years. What happened next? Palmer stayed at HSBC until his... Read more

As has been widely reported JPMorgan is following the elimination of its some of its commodities salespeople and traders with the obliteration of its commodities prop business and likely closure of equities and fixed income prop trading business. The Financial Times reports that JPMorgan has 20 commodities prop traders, 19 of whom are in London and one of whom is in New York. Now, this does not seem a large number of... Read more

Candover has thrown in the towel. It revealed yesterday that it intends to wind up its investments and pursue dissolution. Candover already employs far fewer people than at its peak. Back in the good old days we’re informed there were 102 people working there; now there’s 39. “No decisions have been taken yet on whether there will be any further slimming down of the team,” reassures a spokeswoman. “We will make... Read more

The absolutely perfect CV for any front office job in an investment bank, WILL…. 1) Have impeccable academics- Top grades from a top school are a totally necessary but absolutely non-sufficient condition for front office occupations. “Good academics are taken for granted,” reflects Andrew Pullman, former head of HR at Dresdner, turned managing consultant at People Risk Solutions. 2) Make a big deal out of the impeccable academics- “Most other candidates will... Read more

Needless to say, investment banks have massively increased front office salaries. Boutiques, which were immensely popular as employers immediately after the (first wave of the) financial crisis, generally haven’t. As a result, they are considerably less appealing as employers than they once were. However, now that banks are starting to look shaky and make redundancies, some boutiques are trying to reinvent themselves as the virtuous face of moderation. Evolution, for example,... Read more

Weird: Credit Suisse managing directors are to receive a cash award on the 1st of September to compensate for last year’s 30% cut in their bonuses thanks to the UK bonus tax. This is odd because: - Banks are not usually given to making mass retention payments unless they’re in the throes of a merger or moment of upheaval. - Credit Suisse doesn’t look like it can afford it. Its compensation ratio is already 50%... Read more

Mervyn King has weighed in on the bonus debate. The guvnor says big payouts have encouraged too many talented people to squander their lives in banking when they could have been doing something more constructive instead. King made his comments to the Treasury Select Committee. According to the Telegraph, King says young people look at City compensation packages and think they “dominate almost any other type of career ... It's... Read more

As a headhunter, I am a parasite who will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. I know this to be true, since Geraint Anderson, the former Dresdner analyst now known to be City Boy, says so. It's the latest of many attacks upon my profession. Are we really that bad? Yes. How do I know? Well, at the Global Derivatives & Risk Management conference in Paris, our... Read more

I'm going to retire before I'm 30. I'm currently 25, and since graduating from Cambridge in 2004 I've already earned over £1m after tax, and have paid off the mortgage on a flat in South Kensington and country house in Surrey. Even in this new world we enter of deferred bonuses, lower payouts and tighter municipal regulation, I'm still absolutely convinced I'll have retired within five years. When I first said... Read more

Recruiters are not liked. On these pages, readers frequently describe them as ‘estate agents in pointy shoes.’ However, this may not be entirely fair. The source of recruiters’ unpopularity appears to be their failure to explain why you didn’t get the job. But for reasons listed below, expecting this kind of feedback is totally unreasonable. 1) Recruiters are still drowning in candidates The CEBR estimates that 39,000 jobs have gone across the City... Read more

With jobs harder to come by, bankers are behaving badly towards recruiters and headhunters, who are suddenly unable to slot them into comfortable new positions. “We’re starting to get a lot of angry emails,” says one structured credit headhunter. “Bankers are approaching us and questioning why we can’t place them in hedge funds or commodities businesses. They’re venting their spleens, but there just aren’t the jobs.” “Candidates are more rude... Read more

Quants are at the centre of the vortex as banks go down the plughole, with some feeling pretty sorry for themselves. Much of the collapse in morale is down to Quanting being a young profession: most have never been personally affected by a recession before. When Paul Wilmott started teaching Quant finance at Oxford in the 1990s, it was an obscure specialisation. Quants are part of the furniture But although the... Read more

You may not like recruiters. You may think that they are like estate agents or journalists. You may even accuse them of being parasites. But if you want a new job, it’s counterproductive to antagonize them and productive to get them on your side. Here’s how to do it: • Put yourself in their shoes All the recruiters we spoke to would like to point out that they make their money... Read more

So, let me get this straight. In simplistic terms: 1. Shanice, a single mother of four (by four different fathers) from Alabama who has never had a job in her life, is granted a $180,000 loan for by a mortgage broker spiv for her first home, in true 'American Dream' fashion. 2. Mortgage-broking spiv mis-sells such applicants to lenders, as ifShanice actually has a hope in hell of paying off her... Read more