A lagging recovery from the financial crisis, numerous debt crises in Europe and the future of regulation mean banks are tightening their belts and handing out pink slips, DealBook reports. Goldman reportedly plans to slash 10% of non-compensation expenses over the next year, as well as cut headcount, though the numbers have not yet been revealed. BofA is expected to announce layoffs in its securities unit, while Credit Suisse is... Read more

Even if shareholders approve it, the much talked about planned merger of NYSE Euronext and the Deutsche Boerse probably won't happen until the end of this year, says Joe Mecane, Executive Vice President, Co-Head U.S. Cash and Listings for NYSE Euronext. Speaking today at the Sifma Financial Services Technology conference, Mecane shared with eFinancialCareers that once the shareholders vote next month, it will still need approval from about 47 different... Read more

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group today maintained its commitment to open outcry trading with a 15-year leaseback of it's huge Chicago trading floor. CME Group, which calls itself the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, is housed in the historic Chicago Board of Trade Building, which is actually comprised of three structures in the heart of Chicago's financial district. Although the CME has hired Jones Lang LaSalle and... Read more

Harvard Business School's incoming class will have far fewer finance professionals than in previous year and more students will have manufacturing and technology backgrounds, according to the Wall Street Journal. About 25% of the 919 students in the class of 2013 are from private equity, banking and venture capital, down from 32% last year. Meanwhile students with manufacturing backgrounds jumped to 14% from 9%, and technology rose from 6% to... Read more

As the Federal Reserve Bank of New York pushes ahead with its Dodd-Frank mandates, the souped up supervision division, newly renamed the Financial Institution Supervision Group (FISG), is on the lookout for a few good men and women. Back in March, FISG head Sarah Dahlgren noted the need to increase resources. And now word is out that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s supervisory division is on the lookout... Read more

Turnaround firms like Alvarez & Marsa and FTI Consulting are finding opportunities in ailing local governments and school districts, according to the Wall Street Journal. Conway MacKenzie expects three times the number of such projects as 18 months ago, as “the slowly improving economy may help some state and local governments solve short-term revenue-and-spending imbalances, municipalities with so-called structural issues, like high pension liabilities, shrinking tax bases or significant population... 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

Wall Street firms may cut staff if revenue continues to slump through the second quarter, Normura analyst Glenn Schorr told Bloomberg Radio. In an interview with host Tom Keene, Schorr said: “Most firms will cull what they’ll call the bottom five to 10 percent each year to make room for new recruits. It usually doesn’t happen at the high end of that range. However, when the revenue environment becomes challenged... Read more

As asset-backed securities continue to make a comeback, it seems the subprime crisis is but a distant memory on the street. Some of the change can certainly be due to the improvement in delinquencies on consumer debt, according to the Wall Street Journal. And, as the space grows, so too are the opps. MarketAxess, for one, is taking advantage of the turnaround, recently launching electronic trading in consumer-based asset-backed securities, including... 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

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

American women, beware. BusinessWeek reports that a wave of women from China, Taiwan, and Vietnam pursuing U.S. MBAs are driving up the overall percentage of women in such programs. Women now outnumber men in East Asia taking the test. Last year, a record 105,900 women took the exam -- 40% of all test takers. This ambition goes beyond just grad school. A recent Bloomberg survey found that 76% of Chinese... Read more

For old-school commodities trading giants Goldman and Morgan Stanley, the Glencore IPO represents a nightmare come true: the rise of unregulated rivals. Businessweek explores the significance of the offering to mainstay Wall Street firms in the face of headlines that the Swiss firm has hit London’s FTSE 100 list of most valuable stocks this month, and the CEO’s stake is estimated at about $10 billion. After all, the old firms are... 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

The European Union is investigating Goldman, JP Morgan and 14 other large banks for possible antitrust violations involving the market for credit default swaps (CDS) derivatives, according to Reuters. The European Commission said today it would investigate whether 16 investment banks and CDS market information provider Markit had colluded or abused a dominant market position. The 16 banks being examined are: JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP... 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

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

Former Goldman head of natural resources Raymond Strong, will join Evercore Partners as a senior managing director. [NYTimes] AIG hired Peter Juhas, a financial institutions specialist at Morgan Stanley who advised the government in its dealings with the insurer on its bailout. [DealBook] ING hired Alain Karaoglan to prepare for the initial public offering of U.S. operations after he helped AIG divest businesses. [Businessweek] Citigroup hired former Citadel senior executive... Read more

It’s no surprise that the post of derivatives reconciliation specialist is gaining in profile. According to the NYSE Euronext, March trading volumes for its global derivatives and cash equities exchanges grew at a sizeable clip. Of the 9.2 million contracts traded per day, the average daily volume (ADV) of global derivatives increased 11.9 percent in March 2011 as compared to the prior year. ADV grew 2.5 percent from February 2011... Read more