With the wealth of established talent that works and resides in the City, expect London to remain a global financial centre for some time yet.

There has been much hype this year about a “mass exodus” of London bankers and traders to more favourable tax regimes in Asia and the Middle East.

Even London Mayor Boris Johnson weighed in on the debate, warning that new bonus regulations and higher taxes could see up to 9,000 executives turn their backs on the City.

But ten months on, fears of a talent drain appear to be overblown as we are still seeing a strong commitment to London from the financial services sector.

Major banks such as UBS and Nomura have recently commissioned new offices in the City, and Wall Street firm JPMorgan has signed a deal to shift its European headquarters to Canary Wharf.

Employee confidence is also up heading into bonus season. Morgan McKinley’s latest bonus survey found that nearly half of London bankers and finance professionals expect a higher bonus pay-out than last year.

The number of professionals entering the City jobs market last month is also up 60% on the same time last year.

With the wealth of established talent that works and resides in the City, expect London to remain a global financial centre for some time yet.

Bonus pay outs, exodus, Finance Jobs in London, Taxation

We spend a lot of time in this job looking forward and planning for the future and seldom take the time to stop and reflect on things previous. Our company conference on Saturday offered that time for reflection and provided a reminder of how tough times were in financial services back at the start of 2009…

 
Back in the business after Christmas in Cape Town but with a number of key people still enjoying a well earned break – it has certainly felt busy these first couple of weeks back at work. We didn’t expect to see such a significant jump in new job vacancies coming onto the market compared to this time last year.  December figures also showed an impressive 24% hike in recruitment activity compared to December 2008 (Morgan McKinley London Employment Monitor – December 2009).

 
Morgan McKinley’s 2010 Hiring Market Outlook Survey of 124 City HR and line managers re-iterated the view that this year will present professionals in London with a wide choice of career prospects – 83% of respondents expected hiring to increase over the coming year.

 
Whilst remuneration is likely to become one of the biggest challenges for employers over the coming months, it is the demand for experienced talent across the sector that will probably create the key personnel challenge, with employees being “poached” by competitors.

 
Having witnessed a degree of professional migration over the last 18 months it is encouraging to see London promising greater opportunities for experienced career minded professionals within an established global infrastructure in the coming year.

 
We’ll have to wait and see how the tax and regulatory environment evolves and the extent to which global talent gravitates to London …

2010, Finance Jobs in London, Finance Managers, Financial Services, jobs, London, new jobs, Positive attitude, Tax