HK
HK asset management hiring: is the worst over?
11 June 2009
The Hong Kong employment market in asset management was looking as bleak as the banking sector six months ago, but now redundancies are declining and replacement recruitment is becoming more common.
Hiring in the funds industry is “loosening up” a little, with firms recruiting again when employees leave, according to Andrew Oliver, managing director, Profile Search & Selection in Hong Kong. “That was not the case two to three months ago when the response would have been to simply not replace and to pass their responsibilities onto others in the team,” he adds.
Richie Holliday, managing director of Morgan McKinley’s Hong Kong office, also sees signs of a slow recruitment recovery within asset management. “We’ve seen openings in large houses that have already done their right-sizing. There aren’t so many redundancies as earlier this year. Firms are now talking to recruiters about hiring to position themselves so they can cash in when the market picks up.”
But any employment improvement should not be exaggerated. Oliver explains: “The industry on the whole tends to be more thoughtful and cautious, thus reticence to hire is probably more due to the management wishing to see significant and sustained recovery in the market before taking any action.”
Holliday adds that although firms are starting to focus on their future headcount needs, this hasn’t yet created many actual vacancies. “The job mandates we're getting are mainly strategic and very senior, at a regional level. There’s not much at AVP or below.”
When funds have their senior staff sorted out, they will at some stage need to hire more junior professionals. “There will be a trickle-down effect, but firms don’t know when this will be. It could be later this year, it could be 2010,” says Holliday.
Oliver has recently received mandates in both investment research (equity and credit) and institutional sales. “However this market is not like any other we have seen before. There’s little in the way of thematic hiring (i.e. everyone wants a China analyst), it’s much more tailored to the individual institution and how that firm is viewing its business needs over the next 12-24 months.”
How hard is it to find good senior candidates in the current climate? “Very difficult indeed,” says Oliver. “There are fantastic people available, but it’s not as easy to pry top talent out of a job as many seem to think. Why jump into the unknown, with a management team you have no history with, in an unstable market, and abandon the goodwill you have with your current company?”
Unemployed senior professionals taking career breaks might not think now is the right time to move either, says Holliday. “At that level you could have the luxury of waiting another six months and seeing if the market has improved,” he adds.
