These financial bods being made redundant

[Shnozz]

BBC reckons 25,000 financial bods will have been chopped over the last 6 months because of the drop in profits and losses sustained by the credit crunch.

So a few of these may opt to take retirement, but where do the remainder get absorbed? Thats a sh1t load of highly paid well qualified people to find alternate work outside of their ordinary field...

[215cu]

That's nothing, the UK over the last few years has lost 50,000 jobs in engineering.

Equally as valuable and no one has shed a tear.

[E36GUY]

My wife's team at DeutscheBank all got the chop a few weeks ago. She survived but has been shunted backwards into a team she doesn't want to be in.

[rude-boy]

215cu said:

That's nothing, the UK over the last few years has lost 50,000 jobs in engineering.

Equally as valuable and no one has shed a tear.

Oh there are a fair few of us in the more office based world who know the way the world turns and the potential impact of removing the capacity for a primary industry form the country.

At least the engineers have a skill which can be exported and diversified. The finance bods are rubber ducked though.

one thing i have always made sure of is that other than my day job there are 2 other jobs in totally different lines of work which I could do if need be.

[Don]

rude-boy said:

one thing i have always made sure of is that other than my day job there are 2 other jobs in totally different lines of work which I could do if need be.

Good for you.

Me? Without computers I'd be up Faeces Fairway without a nine iron.

I suppose I could do Advanced Driving instruction but I'd still need to formally qualify first in order to charge money...

[Gazzab]

The Times have reported there are loads of vacancies at Curry restaurants.

[fido]

I'd say a fair bulk of them are administrative jobs, which are not specific to the finance industry and quite portable to other parts of the service sector. The rest are salespeople (again not 100% specific to finance), technicians (IT is very portable), and a few mathematicians/engineers who can work in erm engineering, except there are no jobs .. sh8t .. ok they can work in academia, research, or do a bit of minicabbing if they are petrolheads.

[Don]

Gazzab said:

The Times have reported there are loads of vacancies at Curry restaurants.

Yeah but you need "cultural sensitivity" to work in them, apparently. Do you see these finance guys being (a) cultured or (b) sensitive in the required manner?

[Chilli]

Coming from this area myself, it is happening all over the place. However, there are always jobs out there, and job losses are nothing new. Instead of mergers, takeovers, or re-structuring, this is called the credit crunch! Same old stuff though. In my experience, firms will go mad with the axe, and then re-employ a few months later. I know of 2 people (at my bank) that received redundancy for between 15 and 20 years service, only to be re-employed a few months later...Nice work if you can get it.

[princeperch]

My mate who works for hedge funds in the middle office has only been working for nearly 2 years and has already been made redundant twice.

He doesnt mind because he got paid off in both instances.

I dont know what the various B-days are going to be like in the City though...

[TheCarpetCleaner]

Don said:

Gazzab said:

The Times have reported there are loads of vacancies at Curry restaurants.

Yeah but you need "cultural sensitivity" to work in them, apparently. Do you see these finance guys being (a) cultured or (b) sensitive in the required manner?

They would all probably be too busy comparing business cards, pinstripes and harping on about short sleeved shirts and ties rather than do any work...

[Fittster]

princeperch said:

My mate who works for hedge funds in the middle office has only been working for nearly 2 years and has already been made redundant twice.

He doesnt mind because he got paid off in both instances.

I dont know what the various B-days are going to be like in the City though...

I don't have any experience of working in the Finance industry so can someone explain what the terms, Front Office, Middle Office and Back Office mean.

[Bing o]

Chilli said:

Coming from this area myself, it is happening all over the place. However, there are always jobs out there, and job losses are nothing new. Instead of mergers, takeovers, or re-structuring, this is called the credit crunch! Same old stuff though. In my experience, firms will go mad with the axe, and then re-employ a few months later. I know of 2 people (at my bank) that received redundancy for between 15 and 20 years service, only to be re-employed a few months later...Nice work if you can get it.

It's very cyclical - I guess you just have to make sure that you are as employable as possible, which is why I've always tried to avoid getting pigeon-holed into niche areas.

[Chilli]

Fittster said:

princeperch said:

My mate who works for hedge funds in the middle office has only been working for nearly 2 years and has already been made redundant twice.

He doesnt mind because he got paid off in both instances.

I dont know what the various B-days are going to be like in the City though...

I don't have any experience of working in the Finance industry so can someone explain what the terms, Front Office, Middle Office and Back Office mean.

Front office - Execute the trades
Middle Office - Monitor positions and calculate exposures, product pricing, yields etc
Back Office - Settle and administer the trades

HTH.

[SplatSpeed]

Gazzab said:

The Times have reported there are loads of vacancies at Curry restaurants.

[Lord Benjamin]

Aaaaah!

A trip down memory lane to 2001 when the last professional services 'clean out' took place. I recall one firm that made a large number of people redundant via email; another where a firm christmas party attendee list was accidently left on the photocopier. A number of employees were not on the list; it soon transpired that they were all going to be made redundant before the party, so there was not much point them being invited.

Most of my business is coming from Corporate Recovery and Restructuring assignments and 2008 is looking like having 'vintage' potential, so I am more than happy for the 'experts' to continue to talk us into a recession.

[Tony*T3]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

hmmm, worrying. In todays Britain, openly saying things are of 'a little concern' usually means that secretly the shits well and truly hit the fan and its nigh on the end of the world.

Its my observation on house prices too. House prices arent really falling because no ones got the balls to actually buy. People that want to sell cant, and are seitting there hoping its all a bad dream that isnt really happening.

Only when people are forced to sell or have their homes taken off them will we see the house prices collapse.

I've dropped 65k off the asking price of my house, and it still didnt generate any more intrest. Not even what i would have termed 'stupid offers'. Is it monsterously over priced? No. But no intrest. I think I could knock another £50k off and still no ones buying.

[rude-boy]

Don said:

rude-boy said:

one thing i have always made sure of is that other than my day job there are 2 other jobs in totally different lines of work which I could do if need be.

Good for you.

Me? Without computers I'd be up Faeces Fairway without a nine iron.

I suppose I could do Advanced Driving instruction but I'd still need to formally qualify first in order to charge money...

To be fair there are a fair old number of jobs out there which don't take the brain of Britain to do. Mostly it is down to being prepared to learn new things and work hard.

Having parents who had always had to work their backsides off to get themselves and their children where they wanted them to be in life, often not knowing if the game would even be on the same board, let alone to the same rules next year, taught me the more stings to your bow, the safer you are.

Money can't buy you happiness but happiness can't buy you dinner.

[rhinochopig]

RANT ON: That's what happens though when you pay absolutely ridiculous salaries to people. I for one have no sympathy, as a lot of these people will have been directly or indirectly responsible for the loss of the 50,000 engineering jobs mentioned by another poster.

Science and Technology in this country is being shafted by the city as one of the performance metrics used is turnover per employee. So in order to get investment, S&T companies are having to minimise staff levels and resort to filling any resource gaps through the outsourcing of work as consultants do not appear on the headcount.

Consultancies are used to fill the resource gap, but the company loses any valuable knowledge/experience gained by the consultant when they leave, which weakens the company. It is the city that has forced this state of affairs and I for one will not be shedding any tears for a lot of the fund managers. RANT OFF.

[Chilli]

rhinochopig said:

RANT ON: That's what happens though when you pay absolutely ridiculous salaries to people. I for one have no sympathy, as a lot of these people will have been directly or indirectly responsible for the loss of the 50,000 engineering jobs mentioned by another poster.

Science and Technology in this country is being shafted by the city as one of the performance metrics used is turnover per employee. So in order to get investment, S&T companies are having to minimise staff levels and resort to filling any resource gaps through the outsourcing of work as consultants do not appear on the headcount.

Consultancies are used to fill the resource gap, but the company loses any valuable knowledge/experience gained by the consultant when they leave, which weakens the company. It is the city that has forced this state of affairs and I for one will not be shedding any tears for a lot of the fund managers. RANT OFF.

What about me then. Say I get made redundant, and can't find anything else. Wopuld you say that I got wghat I deserved cause I've caused 50,000 engineering jobs to be lost? Not sayinmg I'm a fund manager or a huge earner, but I work in the industry.