several have essentially frozen hiring.
On Wall Street, Hiring Spree Meets Credit Crunch
July 30, 2007, 12:29 pm
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Talk about market timing.
Even as the fuel for the buyout boom seemed to vanish, and major stock indexes posted their worst weekly decline in years, a securities-industry association reported that employment at securities firms in the United States has reached a record high. Citing figures released last week by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Financial News said that in June, United States companies added 10,000 people to their staffs, their biggest monthly hiring binge in seven years. The new recruits pushed Wall Street’s employment level past its previous record, reached in March 2001. Securities firms in the United States now employ 848,300 people. (But for how long?)
Wall Street firms are hardly in crisis mode. But the turmoil of the last week has raised concerns about whether the conditions that allowed them to thrive over the last year are going away.
Shares of financial firms have been among the biggest decliners in the recent market rout. On a more personal level, some Wall Street employees are beginning to wonder how their year-end bonuses will compare with last year’s bumper crop.
Financial News sums the situation up this way:
The recruitment drive has coincided with a period of record profits for investment banks but, with the crisis in U.S. subprime mortgages causing banks to pull funds out of big leveraged buyouts, there are fears the market may have peaked.
Without naming names, Financial News said some investment banks have already slowed their recruitment efforts, and several have essentially frozen hiring.
Things are a little better in Europe, where revenues for securities firms have been better. And some banks in the United States have relocated staff from New York to London, which is seeing much more growth in international business.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/
on-wall-street-hiring-spree-meets-credit-crunch/