British and US professionals look to region as employment safe haven
An increasing number of banking professionals from the United States and Britain are eyeing Asia, and specifically Hong Kong, as a safe haven for jobs as redundancies in investment banks around the world loom, headhunters reported.
They say that there has been a noted increase in the volume of job applications and resumes being submitted from these two markets since the end of last year.
'I wouldn't say that it was a flood, but it's definitely more than a trickle. From the resume standpoint, I can see that a lot of them have worked with collateralised debt obligations,' said Matthew Wu, manager for front office banking at recruitment agency Michael Page, noting that many of the candidates were Hong Kong Chinese who had moved overseas.
Andrew Brushfield, director for rival firm Robert Half International, agreed that there had been an increase in the volume of banking professionals expressing an interest in moving to Hong Kong to work.
'We have seen a significant increase over the past two or three months. The major difference is that in the past it tended to be Hong Kong or Chinese people who were overseas looking to return. That hasn't subsided, but now you are [also] getting Americans or Europeans, without the capability to work here immediately because they don't have the visas, expressing an interest as well,' he said.