Jefferies is building up its fixed income sales and trading as well as its global equity research teams. In a Press Release the investment bank announced today the hiring of Susan Bonsell as a Managing Director in Fixed Income Sales. She'll be based in the firm’s Dallas office. “We are pleased to welcome Susan to Jefferies and believe her broad experience and strong institutional relationships will extend our firm’s reach... Read more

In an effort to boost it's investment banking business, Jefferies has nabbed veteran debt capital markets banker Casper Bntinnck to lead the firm’s Financial Institutions Debt Capital Markets business based in New York. In a press release, Jeffries Global Head of Investment Banking and Capital Markets, Benjamin L. Lorello said, "during the last 12 months, we have extensively built out our Financial Institutions investment banking business across the banks and... Read more

With fewer deals to grab, buyout specialists are shifting gears as asset managers that run hedge funds and strip malls. Blackstone is earning twice as much from owning property as from buyouts; Carlyle has morphed into a fund-of-funds business by taking over hedge funds; and KKR now owns a stake in a 5,500-mile U.S. pipeline and lends to distressed companies, according to a Bloomberg article. The story goes on to... Read more

Sometimes using recruiters works better than applying directly to banks. And if you put in extra effort when choosing your consultants, your career could benefit. Here are some reasons why. 1) Screen and select There’s a limited number of large financial services firms and it’s difficult to look into the quality of their internal hiring teams. But recruitment firms are comparatively plentiful, so you should at least be able to find... Read more

Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase, now want to help investors bet on people’s deaths through pension fund bonds, according to Bloomberg, which writes: “Pension funds sitting on more than $23 trillion of assets are buying insurance against the risk that their members will live longer than expected. Banks are looking to earn fees from packaging that risk into bonds and other securities to sell to investors. The hard... Read more

In Universum’s annual ranking of undergraduate college students’ favorite employers, banks, Big Four accounting and oil firms fell in estimation to sexier companies like Apple, Walt Disney and Google – the later of which came out on top in the survey’s rankings. In fact, “Nearly one of five business students told Universum they wanted to work for Google, up from 16.6 percent in 2010,” BusinessWeek reported. The top 10... Read more

JPMorgan Chase named former Barclays M&A banker Drago Rajkovic to lead the bank's technology-related mergers and acquisitions group.[DealBook] UBS hired Kenneth Cohen, who oversaw commercial-mortgage bonds at Lehman. [Bloomberg] Kevin Cox, formerly head of Americas investment banking at UBS, is joining Citigroup as co-chairman of global industrials banking. [DealBook] Old Mutual Asset Management, the hedge fund arm of the London-based life insurer, is set to name Steve Belgrad... Read more

Johnson Associates are predicting moderate increases in incentive compensation across the financial services industry this year, but they expect that in most cases, bonuses will remain below the highs of 2007. The compensation specialists say key drivers impacting bonuses are "the pace of the recent economic recovery, varying impact of regulation on business activities both globally and regionally, mix of business, and ongoing uncertainty in world markets." As for where they... Read more

HSBC plans to close offices and cut headcount in an effort to cut costs by as much as $3.5 billion over the next three years to improve profitability, which it said could be hurt by stricter financial regulation, according to BusinessWeek and DealBook. One of the biggest European banks, HSBC said it would focus on commercial banking activities and wealth management, while scaling back its retail banking operations to the... Read more

While the Bloomberg BusinessWeek annual undergraduate business school ranking turned out few surprises, a peek into the student-survey based rankings of 139 of the nation’s undergrad programs had a few unexpected results. The article today states: “In the recent ranking, you would assume that Rensselaer Polytechnic's Lally School of Management and Technology, ranked No.43, is a middle-of-the-pack business program. You wouldn't know that the school ranks No.1 in both... Read more

This could be a good year for job seekers in the financial sector. The latest eFinancialCareers survey released today found that nearly two out of three (62.1%) financial professionals plan on moving to a new employer in 2011. Moreover, four out of five (80.5%) say their current employer has not offered them any positive incentives to stop them from jumping ship. Perhaps an even more important statistic in terms of... Read more

M&A is looking good. This, according to a Bloomberg article quoting Evercore’s Roger Altman, who predicts the current upswing in deal-making will peak to exceed the record $4 trillion of takeovers at the height of the 2007 merger boom. Altman says M&A cycles tend to last five to seven years, and we are currently two years in. According to the article, hot dealmaking industries include natural resources, health care,... Read more

Other than not getting selected as a possible candidate, nothing’s more painful than the feeling that you’ve left money on the table. If you’ve been lucky enough to get a job offer, or if you’re one of the ones in the final running, it’s probably time for your prospective employer to turn the tables on you. It’s the question you know they’re going to ask. What salary and take are... Read more

U.S. Bancorp plans to hire 70 to 80 people for its newly created program aimed to help ultra-high-net-worth individuals “focus on wealth-transfer goals rather than only wealth accumulation,” according to an Investment News article. The Minneapolis based bank has hired several Wells Fargo executives to steer the initiative, called Ascent Private Capital Management, including chairman and CEO Richard Davis. Other news: Bernanke signaled that the central bank is... Read more

HSBC hired Bertrand Delgado as an emerging-markets strategist, luring him away from Roubini Global Economics. [Bloomberg] Goldman’s John Rogers was promoted to executive officer from chief of staff. [DealBook] The SEC named Julius Leiman-Carbia associate director to its broker-dealer examination program. [Investment News] UBS named Paul Knight as the global head of its metals and mining group. [DealBook] Nomura hired Mark Leahy as head of debt origination and fixed income... Read more

Gone are the days when all the horrendous hours would pay off and an investment banker could retire in his or her 40s. A Wall Street Journal column examines investment bankers’ shrinking pay packages, which have dropped to an average of $1.6 million for a mid-career banker – the after-tax cash portion of which is about $380,000. This is nearly half of the $2.2 million average of just two years... Read more

The affluent like to get their hands dirty when it comes to their investments, according to Investment News which cites a recent Dow Jones Survey of 1,287 investors with more than $500,000 in investable assets. The survey found that 41 percent use online and discount brokerages to manage their investments; 31 percent use a full-service firm, and 28 percent use independent firms. OF those who do hire a professional, 70... Read more

When Citigroup released its earnings today one of the dimmer numbers in an otherwise "okay" quarter was the poor performance of its investment bank which saw revenues plunge nearly 20 percent compared to the same quarter last year and a whopping 27 percent from the final three months of 2010, according to Shira Ovide's blog at WSJ.com. Citigroup reported first-quarter net income fell 32 percent to $3 billion, or 10 cents... Read more

Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. increased its equities department headcount 20% over the past year, bringing those ranks to 400 traders and analysts worldwide, and may go on to increase its staff by another 100 professionals globally, according to recent comments by company CEO Shawn Matthews. Cantor is hoping to build itself into a full-service investment banking boutique that’s “trying to re-create a style of business that disappeared over the years as... Read more

Banks including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are hiring more senior bankers and salespeople in their foreign-exchange operations, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports: “Banks are snapping up Wall Street staffers disappointed by pay that was down some 10 percent to 15 percent in 2010, including bonuses with a higher component of unpopular restricted stock.” Hiring is especially strong in electronic trade-execution platforms, as well... Read more