eFinancialCareers

UK private bank Brown Shipley has set up an Edinburgh office and plans to expand aggressively over the coming 18 months. But is Scotland’s talent pool deep enough to support yet another new player? Brown Shipley has poached Graham Auld and Victoria Drysdale from Deutsche Tilney to run its Edinburgh office and says it has ambitious plans to expand north of the border. John Williams, the firm’s private client divisional... Read more

The Financial Services Advisory Board’s (FiSAB) annual report on Scotland, conveniently timed to coincide with Global Financial Services Week, attempts to paint a pretty picture north of the border. But surely it can’t be that rosy? The report waxes lyrical about various educational initiatives designed to encourage a skilled financial services workforce, and the fact that the industry has grown by 96% since 1998. It’s predicting more success on the... Read more

While no one’s likely to escape the credit turmoil, Scotland’s burgeoning private banking sector looks to be about as safe a haven as there is. Edinburgh-based private bank Adam & Company last week said it had seen annual pre-tax profits grow by nearly a quarter to £20.7m, despite the credit crunch. Managing director David Crathie was reported as saying: “None of us are immune, but our clients appear well placed to... Read more

As Scots plans for a local income tax steam ahead, recruiters have begun warning of the dire effect it could have on jobs. One recruiter says the tax proposals, introduced by the SNP as a replacement for council tax, will spell the death of Scotland’s financial services industry. William Finlayson of Scottish search firm Finlayson Wagner Black agrees: “People would think twice about taking up opportunities. The pool of talent... Read more

Rogue traders and vagabonds yesterday looked to profit by spreading vicious lies about Scotland’s own HBOS. But are things that rosy north of the border? After rumours circulated yesterday about a “liquidity crisis” at Britain’s biggest mortgage lender and Scotland’s second largest bank, HBOS, its share price plummeted by nearly 17%, to a record low of 398p. This wiped £3bn off its market value in one foul swoop. It turned out it... Read more

Barclays Wealth is said to be struggling to retain its private client managers. What are their other options? Mark Kibblewhite, managing director of Barclays Wealth in Edinburgh, was last week locked in crisis talks with a team of “disgruntled private client managers”, according to reports in The Herald. The problems at Barclays Wealth seem to stem from the fact that its staff feel they are being pushed into cross-selling by... Read more

Contractors in Scotland may be forced to bite the bullet as financial services firms look to cut back on temps. The temp market has been booming in Scotland over the last year, as soaring headcount requirements and limited talent have forced companies to fill the gaps with contractors. Rates have soared from £250-£300 a day to £350-£400, according to recruiters, which might be the reason the party looks set to end. Steve Shields,... Read more

The private banking sector is heating up in Scotland, but pay still lags far behind other financial centres. Standard Life Investments is the latest to add a wealth management feather to its cap, following on from HSBC Private Banking, which opened up an Edinburgh branch in January. Other smaller boutique wealth managers like Rathbone Brothers, Bell Lawrie White, and Adam & Co. all provide investment services to Scotland’s upper crust.... Read more

Plans for a local income tax in Scotland could discourage quality candidates from making the move north of the border. Owen Kelly, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise – which is backed by such financial powerhouses as Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Life – has told the Scotsman that Government plans for local income tax are troubling his members. He said: “Anything that starts to look like we have people... Read more

Forget the difficulty in finding the people for financial services jobs, Scotland might struggle to find offices to put them in. Property consultant Jones Lang Lasalle has warned that Edinburgh faces a shortage of office space, but it seems it’s not just space in the Scottish capital that’s in short supply. Scotland is fast becoming the region of choice for back-office roles. Citigroup employs around 235 people in Edinburgh, BNP Paribas... Read more

Education, education, education. The skills shortage in the Scottish financial services market has prompted action at a grass roots level, and its targets are getting younger. The Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland (CIOBS) offers a Certificate in Financial Services in schools, which looks to fast-track pupils into a financial career and is now on its second intake of students. The class of 2006 were the guinea pigs, but last year... Read more

What will be hot and what will not in the coming 12 months? Here’s our verdict… 2008 will be a good year for… Corporate finance The bare statistics don’t make comforting reading. Preliminary figures from insider.co.uk suggest Scottish-only corporate finance deals were a mere £1.44bn in the third quarter of 2007 – down from £5bn for the same period in 2006. However, while the mid-market may have suffered, corporate finance professionals remain convinced that... Read more

What was hot and what was not in Scotland in 2007? Here’s our considered verdict… 2007 was a good year for… Fund management Fund managers in Scotland were defiantly bullish this year: the battle for talent intensified, top names engaged in a game of musical chairs, and profits and revenues increased. Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), for example, lost its chief executive John Phillips in January, and its head of European equities went to... Read more

In Scotland’s candidate-driven market, is it time to speed up the recruitment process or risk missing out on talent? The typical recruitment process in financial services firms takes at least six weeks, during which time candidates can easily have multiple offers on the table. Existing employers are also likely to counter-offer in a bid to hold on to scarce talent, say recruiters. Fraser McMillan, senior consultant at Robert Half, says: “We don’t... Read more

The proliferation of fund accounting jobs in Scotland is creating a fluid recruitment environment where people are skipping speedily from one job to the next. The past year has seen expansions by BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, State Street, Citi, and BlackRock in the fund accounting space in Scotland, and difficulty finding candidates – together with candidates’ own realisation of their worth – has created a revolving door effect. “Everybody’s recruiting and retention... Read more

Insurance underwriters in Scotland have seen big salary hikes in the last year, as a shortage of candidates drives demand. The latest salary survey by recruiter Joslin Rowe paints a different picture from last year, when broker mergers meant insurers were more likely to lose their jobs than land a large pay rise. But with new firms setting up in Scotland this year – such as Ace Insurance which created 200 jobs... Read more

Scottish financial services workers are more in the dark about their bonuses than any other country, according to our survey. The eFinancialCareers.com global survey, which took in responses from 18,000 financial services professionals worldwide, revealed that a huge 47.4% of Scottish respondents don’t know whether to expect a higher or lower bonus this year. Meanwhile 34.6% anticipate more money than last year, and 17.9% expect to see a slide. The respondents were spread... Read more

Scotland is set to benefit from a Barclays Wealth back-office bonanza as the firm looks to commit 1,600 jobs to the region. No sooner do we question the security of back-office jobs in Scotland than a big bank goes and increases its presence in the country. So far this year Barclays Wealth has taken on 145 staff in its Glasgow office, which focuses on HR, finance, technology, risk and operations. It’s now... Read more

The gloves are off in the Scottish fund management industry, as newcomers to Edinburgh have sparked a war for talent. “There’s a lot of poaching going on – it’s a dog-eat-dog world. The cosy deal that once existed in Scotland where they wouldn’t touch each other’s people has long since been ripped up,” says one headhunter in the region. The traditional culture of loyalty in the fund management industry harks back to... Read more

Scotland may have been left relatively unscathed by the credit crunch, but analysts advise financial services employees to watch their back (office). Merrill Lynch has revealed that it is to axe 65 jobs in its Mortgages Plc division in Glasgow, and with other banks with back-office units in the city posting losses, could this herald more redundancies? “I think generally there is a poor visibility at the moment in the markets,... Read more