Equity tie-up pushes banks to hire traders
Print Edition
BANKS in Hong Kong are building up their trading desks to capitalize on the imminent link-up of the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges, spelling a reprieve for one of the banking industry’s endangered species.
Banks and brokerages in Asia launched a heavy round of job cuts in 2012, after hopes of a robust recovery in regional trading were dashed by Europe’s debt problems and China’s economic slowdown.
But banks including BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered hope the link between the bourses, which will at last let investors trade Shanghai-listed shares directly, will boost demand and generate enough work for their newly hired Hong Kong traders and research analysts.
BNP Paribas estimates the link will boost the average daily value of trading on the HKEx by around 38 percent to HK$93 billion (US$12 billion) by 2015.
The French bank has hired 19 staff for its Asian equities division from rival banks in the last three months, said Lee Cook, its head of cash equity for Asia-Pacific.
The hires will expand an equities team that had lost at least seven members earlier in the year.
Standard Chartered has hired a total of eight equities analysts and salespeople in the last week, according to company announcements, bringing its total to 95 stock analysts and 30 equities salespeople globally.
Opportunities abound
Others are also gearing up for the opportunities.
“It’s a great time for us to expand our equities business,” said Fan Bao, CEO of Beijing-based China Renaissance Securities, which in August hired a head for the equities business it plans to build from scratch in Hong Kong.
Dean Stallard, regional director of recruiting firm Hays in Hong Kong, said in a Monday report that the stock connect would have a long-term impact on hiring.
“The Hong Kong stock exchange, securities companies and brokers are expected to benefit from increased transaction volumes and new business opportunities resulting from this gradual integration, and this in turn will generate new jobs in the banking sector,” he said.
The Chinese mainland’s CSI 300 index of the largest Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listings is up 5.5 percent so far this year, with a sharp rally since the end of June demonstrating the rewards on offer for international investors.
Mainland investors are also interested in buying Hong Kong stocks directly for the first time.
Demand for traders and analysts covering mainland stocks has helped push the number of hiring mandates in the city up by about a quarter compared with a year earlier, bankers and headhunters said.
Hong Kong headhunters said such robust hiring was unusual for the last quarter of the year, when banks usually refrain from adding staff ahead of annual bonus payouts.
“I can’t remember it ever being this busy at this time of year,” said Russell Kopp, managing director in Hong Kong at Correlate Search and a specialist in hiring equities staff.
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