Financial news Singapore: Job market news & employment trends for the financial recruitment industry in Singapore

Last year was all about redundancies and rainmakers. Banks were either laying off hundreds, or headhunting new senior managers to guide them through the GFC. In the first half of 2010, however, mid-ranking professionals are, by and large, reaping the rewards as international banks focus their efforts on gaining market share in Asia. Firms started hiring managing directors in Q4 last year, tasking them to build teams in anticipation of growth. Although... Read more

Top flight i-bankers aside, most candidates would be ill advised to ignore the Singaporean banks in their job search. Don’t assume that DBS, UOB and OCBC will always be outclassed in the employment market now that US and European firms are talking of talent wars once again. Recruiters tell me that in certain functions, Singapore’s Big Three have begun to ramp up their headcount on the back of revived post-recession lending. More... Read more

I met a candidate last week who told he was “cooling down” his job search until after Chinese New Year because firms wouldn’t be recruiting anyway in the lead-up to the big break. If you share these silly ideas, please purge yourself of them at once. As a candidate, you should still be on the hunt this week and next week. At the very least, if you’re not getting interviews, you... Read more

President Obama is reigning in the size and capabilities of US banks, but regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore aren't following his heavy-handed lead. This means recruitment at local banks is unlikely to be negatively affected. So why aren’t Asian financial centres keen to break up and constrain their own banks? Here are a few reasons. One It would amount to an undeserved punishment for institutions which have, by in large, survived the... Read more

Asia-Pacific’s number of millionaires equaled Europe’s for the first time last year as the region powered the global economy’s recovery, according to a report by Capgemini SA and Merrill Lynch & Co. (Bloomberg) China yesterday widely expanded a trial program on yuan-denominated cross-border trade - the latest step toward making the country's currency an international one. (Shanghai Daily) Chinese bank and real-estate shares are looking “attractive” to Henderson Global Investors following a... Read more

For IT roles, perhaps more than for any other, banks in Singapore are forced to go global with their job searches. Why? Singapore is an IT hub, so it needs a lot of techies. Banks often hire in the hundreds in one hit, so the scale and time pressure involved can be greater than when they recruit for front-office functions. While you might be able to easily source a couple... Read more

You’re probably sick of seeing Lehman-collapse anniversary articles, but please read on – this one’s a bit different. It focuses purely on how the recruitment landscape has changed for candidates in Asia compared to September 2008. Below are a few key themes which keep cropping up in conversations with bankers, recruiters and HR managers. Banks want the perfect match… Firms no longer like the “compromise candidate”, who ticks two-thirds of the... Read more

An upbeat Financial Times article last week about job opps in Asia has been causing quite a stir in Singapore and Hong Kong. Recruiters’ (and eFinancialCareers editors’) inboxes are currently cluttered with “have you read this?” emails containing the FT link (or one to a similar Asia-leads-the-world story in The New York Times). Overall, this is positive news for anyone involved in the employment industry. Published in such a high-profile, global newspaper,... Read more

It’s been a plentiful year employment-wise for the likes of BOCI, CCB, CICC and ICBC in Hong Kong. As Western banks were busy fighting the financial crisis, Chinese firms took their chance to snare staff and to raise their recruitment levels. And even as the globals now begin to slowly rebuild their headcount, Chinese banks remain aggressive players in the hiring market and are ramping up their compensation to entice... Read more

Being young and jobless in the Asian banking sector isn’t easy. Not only are you fighting for each vacancy with a growing group of unemployed GenYers, but the longer you’re out of work, the harder it gets to land any interviews. And now you’re watching in frustration as the hiring market improves for those higher up the financial food chain (senior associates/VPs and above). Analysts and junior associates are still being... Read more

The job market in Hong Kong is no longer a horror story, but it’s not exactly a fairy tale either. In summary: hiring is stronger than six months ago, but still lacks scale; seniors beat juniors; vacancies are specialist; and staff seem stuck in job-specific silos. Baby recovery takes its first steps First up, some good news. Industry experts agree on at least two things: the recruitment market has improved since... Read more

A new type of hiring war is being fought in Asia as banks put their retrenching days behind them. But it’s not a mass market, genY-chasing rush to recruit; it’s more a slow struggle to snare the skills of senior bankers. Let’s survey the battleground in six simple steps... Stage one: Hiring has slowly picked up since Q2 as a degree of confidence returns to the market, but recruitment is focused... Read more