Finance industry slams brain drain into reverse
By | | 03 June
Bankers facing lay-offs in Europe and the US are looking increasingly at Australia's drum-tight market, led by expatriate Australians tempted home by a buoyant local economy.
About 34,000 Australian nationals have returned from Britain in the past year, the highest number ever registered, according to Link Recruitment.
"I came back for three reasons: I was given a great career opportunity to run a broader business in Australia, I turned 40 and I am about to have my first baby," said Australian-born Grant Lovett, head of fixed income at UBS Australia.
He returned home after 12 years in New York and London where he worked at Bankers Trust, Barclays Capital and UBS. Wall Street and the City of London are in the doldrums but Sydney is brimming with deals.
The commodities boom has made Australia the target for $US59.6 billion ($A62.3 billion) in mergers so far this year, the world's fourth-largest M&A market, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Although still in its infancy compared with Europe and the US, the local debt markets have grown significantly since 2000, fuelled by the nation's mandatory superannuation program.
Pension funds have doubled in size since then and now exceed $A1 trillion, making funds under management in Australia the highest per capita in the world.
Lovett belongs to a growing contingent of Australian expats ready to return despite smaller salaries and bonuses.
"It's across all industry sectors, but the largest is in banking and financial firms," said Jason Cartwright, general manager of global services at Link Recruitment in Melbourne.
At the same time, there has been growing interest from foreigners in heading Down Under.
Cartwright said just more than half of job applications he received came from non-Australians, up from around 35% a year ago. The bulk of the arrivals were from India, New Zealand, Britain, the Philippines and South Africa.
Until last year, most of the flow tended to be out of Australia, with bankers looking to gain international experience and the best often lured by more lucrative packages offshore. But in the first quarter of 2008, there was a 14% decline in the number of Australians heading to London for work, according to Link Recruitment.
"There has been a definite change of sentiment. Candidates want to know what's happening in Australia," said Francoise Gelbard, senior researcher at Talent Partners, an executive search firm.
A buoyant economy, underpinned by a strong Aussie dollar, 17 years of uninterrupted growth and a near 33-year low unemployment rate of 4.2% is a big attraction.
Australia's banking sector has been relatively unscathed by the subprime crisis and companies are struggling to fill positions due to a tight labour market. "The situation remains the same as in 2007 — that is a massive talent shortage across the board," said Cartwright.
Contrary to the US and Britain, which have seen thousands of job cuts at banks such as Citigroup, UBS and Lehman Brothers, there haven't been major layoffs in Australia and financial institutions are robust.
Credit trader Ben Metcalfe has just returned back to ABN AMRO in Sydney after a two-year stint working in London.
He says he is enjoying his daily motorbike ride to work from Manly, the Sydney beachside suburb.
"My commute was cut down to 15 minutes from nearly two hours in London," he added.
Reuters