Financial sector recruiting new employees again

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By Annakaisa Pirilä-Mänttäri
     
      After a drought of several years, financial sector companies have begun to recruit new employees once again. The financial standing of brokerage firms has improved along with rising share prices and increasing trade volumes. However, the current situation is still a far cry from the tech boom of five years back.
      Investment bank Kaupthing Sofi announced last week that they had hired four new analysts. The company, which also offers brokerage and asset management services, currently employs 50 people, but the expected growth rate for this year is extremely high.
      According to Kaupthing Sofi President Heikki Niemelä, the company plans to recruit between 20 to 30 new employees during the rest of the year.
      Niemelä says that the investment bank will receive a banking licence this year, and corporate banking services should be offered by the end of 2004.
      "The markets are sure to grow, but we are confident that our organisation will grow faster than the market. Now is a good time to recruit, because the market growth is not in full swing yet", Niemelä explains.
     
Kaupthing Sofi's recruiting efforts focus on finance professionals with prior work experience. The analysts who were hired last week were lured away from jobs with competitors. According to Niemelä, the investment bank will also hire young people who are new to the field later on, and there should be plenty of such talent available.
      Up until now, the recruitment activity of Finnish investment banks and brokerage houses has mainly consisted of professionals switching from one employer to another. Also, people who lost their jobs during the cost-cutting rounds over the past few years have found new jobs.
      "Now the companies are starting to focus on growth and competition", muses Markku Savikko, the head of the Finnish Association of Securities Dealers.
      However, Savikko says that the recovery of the firms in the financial sector is still only beginning.
     
Matti Ahokas, the Chairman of the Finnish Society of Financial Analysts, also estimates that the job situation is still closer to the trough than the peak. The weakest phase is over, but not everyone who worked in the field in the boom years has yet found a new job and returned after the job cuts.
      The wage level that was common in the financial sector five years ago is also long gone. The people who signed contracts at the time and have retained their jobs earn much more than those analysts and portfolio managers who are hired today.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 28.4.2004

More on this subject:
 Portfolio managers in demand once again
 Back to the job market via the Finance School

ANNAKAISA PIRILÄ-MÄNTTÄRI / Helsingin Sanomat
annakaisa.pirila-manttari@hs.fi