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More Western MBA Graduates Head For Hong Kong For Job Prospect

April 2nd, 2010

HONG KONG, April 1 (Bernama) -- More graduates of top business schools in Europe and the United States are turning to Hong Kong in search of work as Western countries struggle to emerge from the economic crisis, a school director said here Thursday.

In the past, New York and London were considered to be the cities of choice for top-notch MBA graduates.

But, since job markets in the West have slid downhill, the positive outlook for Asia -- with China as the region's economic growth engine -- has recently drawn more graduates to Hong Kong, an Associate Director at London Business School's career services recruitment team Richard Bland said.

He said dozens of graduates of London Business School, widely considered to be among the global top-five business schools, visited Hong Kong this week for unofficials meetings with figures at major financial institutions here, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports.

Bland was in Hong Kong, arranging the meetings between the graduates and the eight financial institutions, which included Citigroup Inc.

Speaking to reporters, he said many students are starting to turn their attention to Asia, as it has rebounded rapidly from the financial crisis.

"Hong Kong has advantages over Shanghai or Beijing, as its sound financial system integrates China with the rest of the world," he added.

Posted in Candidates, Labor and Worker | Send feedback »

China Career Update: it's musical chairs time for mainland i-bankers

April 2nd, 2010

Raymond Ma

Welcome to the first of our weekly updates on the financial services job market in China.

It’s again that time of year when the most frantic job switching among front-office investment bankers takes place, and this is the case in China as much as anywhere else in the Asia.

Recent high-level mainland moves include HSBC’s appointment of Jane Wang – previously vice chairman for China investment banking at Nomura – as China chairman for corporate finance.

Meanwhile, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has reportedly hired former Goldman Sachs Beijing executive director Edmund Sim as its new director of China equity capital markets. Finally, Lee Zhang, China head at Deutsche Bank, has reportedly resigned from his current post to take up a senior role at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

“This is the musical chairs season,” comments CK Wan, a senior client partner at search firm Korn/Ferry International. He says with most firms typically paying bonuses between January and March, bankers – who are unhappy with their jobs or are being lured away by competitors – are making a beeline for the door.

Poor capital markets have suppressed job-hoping activity in the last two years – in China as in most parts of the world – resulting in pent-up demand among bankers to move once there is an opportunity, says Richie Holliday, managing director for recruitment firm Morgan McKinley in Hong Kong.

“The volume of jobs we are aware of has increased hugely in the last 12 months, and most of that actually happened in the last quarter,” he adds.

Holliday expects investment banking vacancies to spike later this year, before settling back to more steady levels. All this bodes well for i-banking candidates – if they seize the moment.

“It means if you are an associate vice president somewhere, there is going to be an opportunity for you to make vice president quicker. It will mean a larger remit and broader responsibilities, which you would have had to work longer for a couple of years ago, or a couple of years hence,” says Holliday.

Compared with last year, when talent in China was snapped up by boutique and local investment banks, much of the hiring will be done by large multinational banks that are seeking to rebuild their revenue streams in Asia., he adds. Sales, trading and advisory roles will be most in demand this year.

Korn/Ferry’s Wan, who expects the current round of movement in investment banking to continue for another two months, adds that firms are on the lookout for bankers with deal origination and execution skill sets.

Posted in Banking & Financial Services | Send feedback »

Defying the global trend, China faces labour shortage

March 24th, 2010

Keith Bradsher, The New York Times

Just a year after laying off millions of factory workers, China is facing an increasingly acute labour shortage...

Chinese workers enjoy their meal beside a billboard in Beijing . APAs American workers struggle with near double-digit unemployment, unskilled factory workers here in China’s industrial heartland are being offered signing bonuses. Factory wages have risen as much as 20 per cent in recent months.

Telemarketers are turning away potential customers because recruiters have fully booked them to cold-call people and offer them jobs. Some manufacturers, already weeks behind schedule because they can’t find enough workers, are closing down production lines and considering raising prices. Such increases would most likely drive up the prices American consumers pay for all sorts of Chinese-made goods.

Rising wages could also lead to greater inflation in China. In the past, inflation has sown social unrest. The immediate cause of the shortage is that millions of migrant workers who traveled home for the long lunar New Year earlier this month are not returning to the coast. Thanks to a half-trillion-dollar government stimulus programme, jobs are being created in the interior.

But many economists say the recent global downturn also obscured a longer-term trend: China has drained its once vast reserves of unemployed workers in rural areas and is running out of fresh labourers for its factories. Since China does not release reliable, timely statistics on employment, wages are considered the best barometer of labor shortages. And temp agencies here in Guangzhou raised their rate for factory workers this week to $1.17 an hour, from 95 cents an hour before the new year holiday. The rate was 80 cents an hour two years ago, before the global financial crisis temporarily depressed wages and demand. The dearth of returning migrants set off a desperate scramble this week to recruit the workers who did step off long-haul buses and trains returning from the interior.

At a government-run employment centre in downtown Guangzhou, employers seeking workers outnumbered job-hunters recently. Outside, Liang Huoqiao, a 22-year-old plastics worker, joined a small group of men and women studying a 40-foot-wide list of companies seeking workers. “You can walk into any factory and get a job,” he said.

The official China Daily newspaper said that surveys of employers showed that one in 12 migrant workers was not expected to return here to Guangdong Province. Cities farther north along China’s coast are also running low on labor; Wenzhou alone posted a shortage of up to one million workers. Guangdong provincial officials announced that they were considering increasing the minimum wage, which varies by city and ranges from $113 to $146 a month.

Higher wages could ease labour shortages by prompting factories to reduce their work forces. But many factories already pay well above the minimum wage. They are wary of further pay increases because it is not certain they can pass the increased costs on to their customers — in particular, strapped importers in the United States and the European Union.

Rising wages suggest the re-emergence of a worker shortage that was becoming evident before the financial crisis. A government survey three years ago of 2,749 villages in 17 provinces found that in 74 per cent of them, there was no one left behind who was fit to go work in city factories — the labour pool was dry.

Mass layoffs in late 2008 and early 2009 because of the global financial crisis temporarily masked the developing shortage of industrial workers. But two powerful trends were still working to reduce the supply of young people headed for factories.

For one, the Chinese government has rapidly expanded postsecondary education. Universities and other institutions of higher learning enrolled 6.4 million new students last year, compared to 5.7 million in 2007 and just 2.2 million in 2000.

At the same time, China’s birth rate has been sliding steadily ever since the introduction of the “one child” policy in 1977. Labour shortages have returned quickly in recent weeks as these long-term trends have collided with a recovery in overseas demand for Chinese goods.

Far more jobs are available these days in China’s interior. Government projects like rail and highway construction have absorbed millions of workers, particularly after Beijing allocated nearly $600 billion to economic stimulus spending in 2009 and 2010. Consumer spending is also rising briskly; auto sales more than doubled last month from a year before, and this has created many jobs in retailing, restaurants, hotels and other inland businesses.

Even before the holiday, companies were struggling to find the employees needed to keep assembly lines running. At many factories, white-collar managers and engineers were forced to spend time on assembly lines to meet deadlines before the lunar New Year, because laborers were in such short supply. The managers often struggled with the tedious but intricate tasks required to make everything from toys to DVD players. “People working in the office, like me, have been asked to help on the factory floor,” said Sky Niu, the Sales Manager at the Hengjia Electronics Company in Dongguan. “Of course, we can only help on the simpler tasks, such as packing.”

The labour shortage is not benefiting workers just through higher wages. Personnel managers here say they are also abandoning the informal tradition of not hiring anyone over 35 — they say they are now hiring workers up to 40 years old, and sometimes older, despite concerns about whether they can keep up week after week with the rapid pace of Chinese assembly lines.

It remains to be seen if Chinese factories will learn from their hiring difficulties now and be less quick to lay off workers during the next global downturn. The current system “is not stable, it’s not healthy,” said Han Dongfang, the Director of the China Labor Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based group that advocates collective bargaining.

Though the wage boost increases the prospect of inflation, it may have another more salutary aspect. The Obama administration has been pushing China to let the renminbi rise against the dollar, which would erode some of China’s formidable advantage in export markets. Rising wages in China have the same effect — while also giving Chinese families more spending power.

Letting wages rise benefits workers, said Jing Ulrich, the Chairwoman of China equities and commodities at J P Morgan. Letting the currency rise benefits currency speculators, she said. Liang, the 22-year-old plastics worker, said that he expected his pay to double in the next five years and added that he already had set his priorities.

“For sure, I want to buy a car,” he said. “Car first, then maybe marriage later.”

Posted in Candidates, Labor and Worker | Send feedback »

Hotel Industry Staff Competition in China.

March 24th, 2010

By René J.M. Schillings

This feature is not about the annual football match between the chef team and the engineers, nor which server sold the most Wine of the Month, this is about fierce competition among hotels to attract the best people.

In a market economy competition must exist. Walk the busy shopping streets of urban China and vendors will try to attract your attention. Hotels, Resorts, Serviced Residences, Restaurants & Bars will compete for business. It is about market share, sales & marketing strategies, and keeping happy customers coming back. In China the number of hotel beds is growing faster than anywhere in the world.

And in every random city new hotels open from a base of 2-5 international hotels up to 5 years ago to 10 hotels today and more to open in the next 5 years. Major cities like Shanghai and Beijing already feel the pinch of overcapacity in post-Olympic (and soon post-Expo) times.

Hotel owners, management companies and analysts crack their brains on how to achieve market share, and get the favor of the consumer who has more to chose from and can shop around. But this fast growth does not only put the Occupancy Rates and Average Rates under pressure. What few hotels realize yet is that they are also competing against each other for the best talents in a limited pool.

Whereas hotels are often built with a 20-30 year plan and expected growing market & needs it is doubtful if in the next 20 years the pool of available employees choosing hospitality will grow too, in China

The days that young hoteliers would join a certain hotel, or group and make their career all the way up with the same hotel, same group are long gone. Today a job with a hotel is good for the next 1-2 years and people see where the next opportunity lies (and in Beijing, Shanghai even faster).

Hoteliers are traditionally mobile, the world is their oyster, and the home is where good jobs are. This also applies to hotels in China anno 2010. Within China the term ‘local expatriates’ who work in any region of China other than their home town is commonly understood. Although hotel companies may promise future transfers to other locations, or gradual promotion it is not surprising that many hoteliers in China can not resist a good offer in another city, or a promotion when joining another brand.

The only way is up is the mood in China for the last 25 years, so why would hoteliers patiently wait for their promotion or do their hardship years in less favorable locations when hotels in more attractive locations are hungry to have them.

It was perhaps good practice for hotels when they open in a certain location to first look at the hotels present for potential recruits. Due to fast expansion of most hotel groups in China the transfer of staff from existing hotels to new openings is limited as existing hotels already struggle to find and keep their talents.

In addition, the expansion is often in the secondary cities where the primary cities do not necessarily want to go, or only for a short period of time. In mature markets, cities like Hong Kong where only 1 or 2 new major hotels open per year it’s quite normal for an F&B Director to slip his business card to a good waitress and ask her to give him a call. An Assistant HOD may be experienced enough to join another, smaller hotel as HOD. When there is a local HR Director who worked for an existing hotel for 10 years get’s pinched by a new hotel opening, the position maybe taken over by the # 2, Assistant HR, who was perhaps also 4-6 years there.

But where will the next opening hotel recruit from? In locations where 10 hotels opened in less than half a decade and still another 10 in the ground this is not only ‘not done’ it also leads to a guerilla warfare for staff. New opening hotels can only apply the trick of scouting the competitor’s staff a few times till they fall victim themselves to the very next new hotel. China has a history of hotel development of less than 30 years with the base of the earliest hotels, where future managers were groomed, only 10% of what is there today.

Up to 10 years ago there were practically no hotel & catering management schools in China as such. Chinese hoteliers started to go overseas to study hotel management about 15 years ago. However the drop out rate of these graduates who do not continue their career in hospitality after graduation is worrying. The graduates of today, who are the managers of the future may deliver only 5-10% of hospitality management graduates today, still working in the industry 20 years from now.

Offering more salary, and offering a higher position is also something that would work out fine in mature markets. In a competitive market pricing is key, a hotel has to offer a salary that is market conform and in China today the market rate for salaries are not determined by regional levels of income but what nationwide is paid for the best. Hotels on Hainan Island need to compete with salaries in Shanghai, Beijing. They may attract staff from less prosperous regions, but will loose them to the higher paying regions.

Secondary cities need not pay the salaries paid in Shanghai and Beijing, but whether you are Shenyang, Chongqing, Jinan or Tianjin, the past 5-10 years salaries locally are no longer competitive when you need to attract managers from all over the country. Title inflation became rampant in China, attracting management with higher titles they had to wait for a few more years in a normal situation. But higher title and higher salary can only keep those fresh recruits only as long as nobody outdoes you. It’s an outright war with ever new tactics.

The more visionary hotel companies have already understood that many other benefits like modern and good staff facilities such as dormitories, staff canteens, and secondary benefits are the new tactics in this war. But when one hotel sets a new trend, the copy-cats will follow soon. The simple promise of promotion or transfer is a carrot everybody is dangling.

Good and intelligent staff recruitment goes from top to bottom. When management is unstable, unqualified, or has high turnover, rank and file will walk too. When rank & file is just fresh out of school, untrained, and keen to leave when better opportunities arise, managers may soon walk too, feeling that they can not achieve the objectives set when they have no staff.

The urgency to fill crucial positions, especially at pre-opening projects may often lead to poor recruitment, which leads to high turnover, which leads to poor reputation as an employer. Sitting on prospective candidates for a position too long and not keeping them in loop of the process, delayed interviews etc. may make a hotel loose the best available talents to other hotels who were simply faster or a bit further in the recruitment process.

Recruiting management and rank & file for new hotel openings can sometimes be hit & miss. Joining an existing hotel with a track record of business volume and where managers moved on thereafter is much more attractive for hoteliers than joining a hotel that isn’t open yet.

A hotel’s reputation as a good employer or where people come and go is as crucial for attracting talents and keeping them as is your guest satisfaction index and Tripadvisor rating are for attracting guests and keeping them.

Posted in News of China | Send feedback »

Shanghai still faces skills shortage

March 20th, 2010

China’s plan to turn Shanghai into a leading financial centre by 2020 could be undermined by its ability to attract the talent it needs, as suggested by respondents to our latest poll.

By FinanceAsia Editors

This time last year, China's leaders announced plans to develop Shanghai into an international financial centre by 2020, but, with just 10 years to complete the transition, the city faces a skills shortage. In our web poll last week, FinanceAsia readers said that it is still far harder to hire finance professionals in Shanghai than in either Hong Kong or Singapore.

And the skills shortage is but one of the obstacles Shanghai must overcome to transform into a globally competitive financial centre, argue market participants. China's currency is still not freely convertible and the rule of law is perceived to be far weaker than in Hong Kong, Singapore or even Mumbai. The government's "direct and discretionary control over the national economy" is also a worry for foreign investors, according to Winston & Strawn, a US law firm that published a report last year on Shanghai's progress towards becoming a financial centre.

Our readers certainly agree. When asked which city is the hardest place to hire finance professionals, 65% voted for Shanghai, compared to just 19% for Singapore and 16% for Hong Kong.

Shanghai's market capitalisation is bigger than both Hong Kong and Singapore, but it still lacks the financial infrastructure to compete with them as a regional centre. Also, few foreign financial professionals are keen to move from low-tax jurisdictions, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, to a city where income tax rates are close to 50%.

But it rarely pays to underestimate China. "Judging by the government's ability to turn China into one of the world's leading economies within less than 30 years, there is certainly hope for Shanghai," wrote Winston & Strawn.

Posted in Candidates, Labor and Worker | Send feedback »

HSBC Said to Hire Nomura’s Wang to Boost China Fees

March 20th, 2010

By Cathy Chan

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest lender, hired former Nomura Holdings Inc. executive Jane Wang to bolster investment banking in the world’s fastest-growing major economy, two people with direct knowledge of her plans said.

Wang, 42, will become China chairman for corporate finance in a newly created position and start in early April, the people said, asking not to be identified before an announcement. She will report to Liu Che-Ning, 44, the head of global corporate and investment banking in Hong Kong and China, they said.

The executive is HSBC’s second senior hire in six months in China, the world’s biggest market for initial public offerings in 2009. Liu, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, joined HSBC in October.

HSBC ranks fourth in arranging overseas stock sales by Chinese companies this year, up from 16th in 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Before this year, the bank’s highest ranking in the past decade was eighth.

The London-based bank doesn’t have a license to underwrite domestic share sales in the country, lagging behind rivals including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG.

Annie Cheng, a spokeswoman at HSBC in Hong Kong, declined to comment. The company, set up in 1865 as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp., plans to trade its shares in Shanghai and moved Chief Executive Officer Michael Geoghegan to Hong Kong from London last month to sharpen its focus on Asia.

Lehman Takeover

Wang, who joined Nomura through the takeover of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s Asia operations in 2008, resigned last week from the Tokyo-based brokerage as vice chairman of China investment banking, people with knowledge of the matter have said. She will be based in Hong Kong with HSBC.

She joined Deutsche Bank AG in 2000 and was promoted to co- head of China investment banking in 2004. Lehman hired her the following year as head of China corporate finance. During her stints at Deutsche Bank and Lehman, she helped win work arranging share sales for Dongfeng Motor Group Co. and China Citic Bank Corp.

HSBC was hired to underwrite Bank of Communications Ltd.’s rights offer of as much as $6.15 billion, and won a role arranging the initial public offering of Swire Pacific Ltd.’s property unit this year, one of the people said.

Banker Departures

HSBC tried to expand its investment bank under co-heads Stuart Gulliver and John Studzinski as part of a five-year plan that started in 2003. Studzinski added about 1,400 people to the corporate and investment bank in 2005, increasing expenses and contributing to the unit’s decline in pretax earnings.

After Studzinski left in 2006, HSBC scaled back its ambitions to focus on a narrower range of securities services targeting emerging markets. Studzinski joined Blackstone Group LP and hired HSBC bankers including Zheng Jianping and Jing Xiaowen in 2008.

The U.K. bank lost senior bankers hired in Asia in 2007, including Asia CEO Michael Smith; Daniel Palmer, global head of capital markets; and Steven Wallace, Asia investment banking head. Smith became CEO of Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.

HSBC’s posted full-year net income of $5.83 billion, missing the $7.76 billion median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Pretax profit at the investment banking unit, led by Gulliver, more than tripled to $10.5 billion. It was the only among HSBC’s divisions to report a gain in profit.

The lender wants to raise more than $5 billion in Shanghai as China opens the exchange to foreign companies, people with knowledge of the matter said in August.

Posted in Leaders on the Move, Banking & Financial Services | Send feedback »

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