Asset Management/banking - advice needed

[Spritz]

Hello All,
I arrived in HK from London less than six months ago with my spouse, who has been relocated. I worked as an analyst on the buy side for almost ten years.
I am trying to find a new role over here and I am finding it really frustrating. Anyone went through a similar experience? How long did it take to find a new role?
I do not speak either Mandarin or Cantonese unfortunately.
All views and suggestions are very much appreciated.
Many thanks.

[freeier]

would think its skill specific.. IIRC many private banks do have need for investment strategist ...
but if you can't speak mandarin then its abit tough to get you through..
research analyst, after UK's mifid and all the similarly ambitious attempts by the regulators, are pretty much a dying breed unless you are really the top of the crop.
mutual funds, if you read Gxp more, are also getting replaced by much cheaper passive funds..

so there goes..
really need to see what you are specialized in to tell...

[Ben101]

I’m having the same experience as you spritz, I’m from the uk and have some solid investment banking experience - been looking for over 6 months now and struggling to get interviews, online applications for roles result in nothing, most recruiters ignore you. I have contacted internal recruiters at banks and not much response from them either. Without contacts here it seems really hard. I put it down to a candidate heavy market. How is it looking for you now - any better?

[hksomewhere]

I'm on the sell side. I'd say that 90%+ of our HK-based clients are Mandarin speaking. The rest are generally quite senior, or specialists/quants who transferred into their roles. Overall, the buyside population is not growing. I have 10+ years of HK/China experience and it also took ages to find my current role.

[RobRoy]

It annoys me so much that the city I love to live in is such a backwater for highly qualified expats to find good roles. I have the same experience as you in the risk management area. I don't even bother applying for roles anymore, HK is all about contacts.

[freeier]

It annoys me so much that the city I love to live in is such a backwater for highly qualified expats to find good roles. I have the same experience as you in the risk management area. I don't even bother applying for roles anymore, HK is all about contacts.

maybe your qualification and expectation and the roles available are not matching ?!
HK have tonnes of risk managers now.. or the whole asia has... there are so many maths/physics/engineering masters and phds roaming the ground trying to find a role and they are available at cheap price... the 2004~2007 boom in derivatives in the region pushed so many locals to get quantitative finance degrees from the top universities both sides of the atlantic..

i am fairly sure if you risk skill is in operation, compliance and legal, there will be guys calling you up every now and then with opportunities... that's the in demand roles now.. but i am not sure for how long more.. could be at the back end of the cycle.

[bdw]

It annoys me so much that the city I love to live in is such a backwater for highly qualified expats to find good roles.

Nah I think the opposite. Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world where highly qualified expats can find good overpaid roles. Most 'normal' places around the world have no such concept and are self sufficient without having to bring in 'expats'.

[Vix85]

I couldn't disagree more... got an MBA here in HK (HKUST) and I had prior to that 6 years of Management Consulting experience in EU. Me and all my non Chinese classmates had to go through hundreds of applications and several hours of networking to find a job. It's not even the lack of language as some of my classmates have several years of Mandarin proficiency, it's the culture and network (especially for Financial professions). I don't think this situation is getting any better, if any is progressively getting worse

[RobRoy]

maybe your qualification and expectation and the roles available are not matching ?!
HK have tonnes of risk managers now.. or the whole asia has... there are so many maths/physics/engineering masters and phds roaming the ground trying to find a role and they are available at cheap price... the 2004~2007 boom in derivatives in the region pushed so many locals to get quantitative finance degrees from the top universities both sides of the atlantic..

i am fairly sure if you risk skill is in operation, compliance and legal, there will be guys calling you up every now and then with opportunities... that's the in demand roles now.. but i am not sure for how long more.. could be at the back end of the cycle.

You are probably right, but I think the issue with most people of such profile is the very low social skills. This is the area where I usually outshine most of the competition, but I never even get the chance to interview. I quite often compare myself with Front Office roles, since I also worked in such a role for a few years. In risk you are super highly qualified with FRM, CFA, Masters/Phd in maths etc, but a random Sales trader on the desk is making more than the manager in such risk department. Anyhow compensation is frustrating for many nowadays (comparing to old days), but its so hard to find jobs in general is very strange to me.

[freeier]

Its been more than 10years since i was in a risk role, so not sure how that has mutated.

i know from 2003~2013 or so, the middle office type of risk control risk managers were super in demand.. new development in derivatives in asia required alot of auxiliary functional staff... risk analysis, risk control, etc.. Deutsch bank was famous for hiring three quant guys to just manage their Excel spreadsheet that break down their huge book of rates derivatives...
Nevertheless supply of the quants would have come about after so many years, say even if students got wind of it and started in 2005, they would have graduated and by 2010 and now you have tonnes of qualified junior risk guys.

Then obviously since 2008 the compliance and operational risk jobs became the hot thing.. but problem with compliance and operational risk is you can't 'study' for it, so you need a few years of on-the-job training to get yourself into the groove of being a ops risk manager...

My take is you are closer to the quant type... then my observation is that many of the large banks have automated and enhanced their processes and system so much so that in this region (Asia) the role of these managers are just pressing of a few buttons daily to generate the risk reports... very little use of their actual knowledge into 'researching' risk.. the real quant jobs are probably now migrated back to the HQ where the system development are.. and they maybe need one or two managers to do the risk approval processes, which is meant for guys that are experienced in that role and have in depth knowledge of how the bank operates...
If you are lucky you can maybe find some of the fund houses looking out for performance risk analysts... that seemed to be what i usually hear about in the last few years...

good luck to your search.. i am out of the financial sector so can only watch in amuse now.. but in hk, the finance jobs are about the only better paying ones.. so every single role are competed by hundreds, if not thousands of people.... most of these from mainland or india has excellent quantitative credential.. maybe your best bet are with the french banks, try to speak to the french engineers and see if you have any leads from them...