My year in Banking... (Part 1)

Time really flies...

It's been almost a year since I started working in Investment Banking (BarCap Fixed-Income) - I didn't really have time to update my blog, but I will be now trying to write more frequently.

Probably you are wondering how is the life in Investment Banking in Fixed-Income. First - it's very, very chaotic. You have hundreds concurrent things to do and the most difficult part is to control and manage all these tasks so that everyone is happy.

People are really at the very high level. Everyone is from top school and present very good intellectual level. There are many guys from France from all Grand Ecoles and they are always working very closely together. On my desk (10 people) three people have PhD, two people have CFA, one person has FRM.

The pay is very good 60k pounds per year plus some possibility of the bonus (apparently this year will not be too good in this respect though), but there is some really though work to back this salary.

I next couple of days I will continue with my banking story.

Pick-up in hiring!

It seems that we are very close to good times of getting hired by financial industry. Many of my friends (and I - as you remember I started in BarCap) found good jobs in recent months (in CS, Sig, MS etc). Many companies are still very cautious (JPMorgan in particular), but the the situation is definitely getting better (especially in NYC)...
I definitely think that 2010 will be a good year to be hired in good job in Financial Services. For me really good hiring atmosphere will come if S&P500 goes up by10 more percent - people will then get confidence that the recovery is sustainable.
It seems that particularly good demand will be there for junior and mid-level hires. The season for MD hiring is already there - hiring at the junior end needs to catch up.
I also think that this is a very good time to start with MBA or CFA. If you do this at this stage of the economy you maybe almost sure that by the end of the program you will enter the hot job market and you would be able to get a decent return on your educational investment .

My (subjective) timeline of hiring:

1. 2Q-3Q 2010 - Hiring in M&A divisions of investment banks.
2. 3Q-4Q 2010 - Hiring in Equities in Banks that didn't rebuild their Equity Groups yet
3. 4Q 2010 - Hiring in Wealth Management Divisions
4. 2H 2010- Hiring for Emerging Markets roles
5. 1H 2011 - Restaffing of Hedge Funds and Private Equity Companies
6. 2011 - Poorer year for Fixed Income Markets

If you agree with this expectations or your don't please discuss in comments.