Are you a mid-level investment banker frustrated about your inability to get ahead? Are you also frustrated about your inability to live in London on less than £250k? Solve both problems at once: go and work for Nomura.
The Financial Times suggests that Nomura is in imminent danger of haemorrhaging senior staff and will need to hire more soon. “A lot of people are just waiting for…stock to vest before they retire,” an ex-Lehman banker informed the paper. When these managing directors (MDs) ride off into the banking sunset, he said Nomura will have no one to step up to replace them: “What Nomura has not done a great job of is building up the young, hungry 30-something bankers who are its future leaders…”
It seems likely, then, that Nomura will need to deplete its top ranks by hiring in some frustrated vice president (VP)-level bankers from rival firms. And those frustrated VPs will have good reason to go there: the Japanese bank reportedly pays on a par with top US houses like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. Unfortunately, however, VPs at Nomura may have to wait longer for their promotions than the FT’s source suggests – in 2011-2012, the bank issued stock that vests over a five year period, suggesting it could be 2017 before any senior Nomura bankers who received bonuses a few years ago feel inclined to quit.
Separately, the Financial Times explains why hedge fund jobs aren’t what they used to be. Hedge funds have got too big, points out the FT. They don’t make money – Brevan Howard’s Master Fund is on track to make a loss for the first time this year. Their fees are too high. The California Public Employees Retirement System (Calpers) may have been the first big pension fund to eschew hedge funds, but it won’t be the last. “In a low interest rate environment you cannot justify the traditional hedge fund fee structure,” the chairman of the London Pensions of Authority informs the paper. In the circumstances, hedge fund employees almost certainly face further cuts to their already dwindling pay. Hedge funds are having an identity crisis: now that they derive most of their assets from pension funds rather than private investors, the FT says they’re more like public sector contractors than maverick strategists.
