Asian Recruiters’ Market Overview

I have been speaking to many of our alumni recently to get their view on the market, and interestingly, at least 3 that I know of, are recruiters in the Asian region. Therefore, I was curious to hear what they had to say about the market.

One of these recruiters is Fabrice Isnard, who works at Robert Walters Shanghai as Associate Director covering the finance and banking market and focusing on mid-to-senior level positions.  Before that he was with Michael Page in Mumbai, where he set up their offices, and before that he worked in Singapore for Michael Page as well.

Since Fabrice is an expert in financial services, and finance related positions, our conversation focused on his area of expertise.  He clarified that a firm like his, counts as the largest client base, foreign capitalized firms but focusses on finding the right local talent for those firms, preferably those with an international perspective, but also a local understanding. 

In answer to the question: “what is going on in Shanghai in terms of finance related positions” he briefly summed up “for foreign banks, normally their first step into the market is through commercial and corporate banking franchise leveraging on existing relationships with foreign companies and which may include transaction banking and trade finance. They then try to increase their market share by targeting local companies. Once granted the RMB license after being locally incorporated, they then try to expand their footprint by implementing retail banking networks, as with HSBC, Standard Chartered, or Citibank. More recently, there has been a move to broaden involvement through investments in trust companies, securities companies, and asset management companies. Some banks have deliberate strategies to expand across the financial spectrum and clearly hope to leverage the potential synergy.” They also tend to focus this activity in tier 1 cities like Shanghai and Beijing.  From what he said, the message seems to be, that the foreign financial institutions, have mostly basic banking operations locally and run any specialized teams regionally, either out of Singapore or Hong Kong.  When asked about Private Banking, one theme that he saw was that banks had started to build out this activity, but quickly merged it with their retail banking operations, because due to China’s strict regulatory regime, complex structured products are not allowed to be dealt locally, so  ‘premium’ retail services, like HSBCs, are really all that the market can support.

When asked specifically about the French banks, he said that they often run ‘an off-shore’ business model, with the local relationship managers wooing clients, and then once they are on board, rerouting their account to Hong Kong or Singapore.  He noted that he saw Nomura doing this as well, growing their private banking business in China from Hong Kong and Singapore.

Fabrice highlighted a very important point, that foreign banks have less than 2% of the China market (in terms of total assets), employing about 40,000, but mostly in retail banking.  This highlights the importance of the local players, but also underlines that employment opportunities in the banking sector will be very retail and commercial/corporate banking focused, with, he predicts, a growing need for relationship bankers in the corporate sector (at the top of the list of the positions in greatest demand), followed by compliance and risk management personnel. When asked about salary, he said that the way the packages are structured differs enormously between local and foreign banks, but the local players can sometimes offer a higher package when all of the ‘benefits’ are calculated.  To compensate the foreign players need to focus more on the ‘cash’ component of their packages.

In terms of Asset Management, due to regulatory requirements, global players like Goldman Sachs AM, Credit Suisse AM, Morgan Stanley AM, JPAM and CLSA, all have joint ventures with local firms, that are mostly run by local management teams.

Finally our conversation turned to finance related roles in companies.  The main point that Fabrice stressed was that his clients were looking for a bridge between local and global staff.  Although traditionally regional hubs have been located in HK or Singapore, recently he has seen a trend to move regional HQ into China like L’Oreal.  As a side note, he said that Robert Walters FMCG team, especially those consultants focusing on the luxury sectors, is their largest billing team, with store managers being where the largest demand is. Procurement and supply chain are also skill sets that are strongly in demand as well as IT. 

Final advice to the students, when applying to your target firms, do not give up after one application, you must be persistent, and not just limit your-self to contacting the HR managers.  HR managers are FLOODED with CVs, so you must find a way to make your application stand out.  He stresses, the on-line portals are a really inefficient way to finding a job in China and job seekers have to learn to ‘grab the phone’.  They also need to tailor their applications to the job descriptions, so they must read it carefully.  To highlight this important point futher, Fabrice recently invited EDHEC students to apply to a position in his team, and was surprised to note that some just sent their CVs to him with a short message such as ‘please find attached my CV’.  This is NOT ENOUGH! When you have the good fortune to have an exclusive chance to apply for a position in an alumni’s team, you MUST STILL ALWAYS take time to write an appropriate email message, outlining why you are interested and a fit for the job you are applying for. 

Rosemary Goater spoke to Fabrice Isnard in Shanghai, and he can be reached on his EDHEC email with any further questions, Fabrice.Isnard@edhec.com.