Employers report positive hiring plans

Positive forecasts are reported throughout the Asia Pacific region, with hiring plans growing stronger in three countries quarter-on-quarter – India, Taiwan and Singapore, according to the Q4 2013 Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.

Q4 hiring plans in India are the most optimistic across the globe. Job seekers are likely to benefit from a surge in demand for talent among firms in IT/ITeS, banking and construction. Employability skills remain a challenge for a number of Indian hiring managers. Many acknowledge that there is an abundance of business and engineering graduates, but that too many of them lack the soft skills that are increasingly necessary as India becomes even more interconnected to the global marketplace.


Singaporean employers report strong hiring prospects for the October-December time frame. While 25% of employers expect to increase payrolls, four per cent anticipate a decrease and 65% forecast no change, resulting in a Net Employment Outlook of +21%. Outlooks are positive in all seven industry sectors, with hiring prospects strongest in the Public Admin and Education sector (+36%), and in Finance, Insurance & Real Estate sector, where the Outlook is +34%.

Source: hrm Asia

European bankers seek refuge in Singapore

Singapore – As the banking crisis continues to loom in Europe, bankers are finding new locations to set up camp while waiting for the storm to ride out.

CNBC reported recruitment firms have seen a rise in the number of European bankers keen on relocating to Singapore, with Stella Tang, director at Robert Half, witnessing a 20% jump in the number of those wanting to move. She added most firms here are planning to increase their headcount this year.

Hudson, on the other hand, have seen a 50% increase in the number of queries for Singapore-based jobs. “The market conditions in places like Europe and the U.K. continue to deteriorate and there is a perception out there that market conditions are significantly better in Singapore,” Craig Brewer, Director of Banking, Financial Services & Legal at Hudson said.

However, despite the strong interest to relocate here, European bankers must be prepared to take a pay cut of anything from 10% to 30%. But that may not be enough to put them off, as Andrew Norton, regional manager at Michael Page says bankers are now willing to forgo an expat package or additional allowances.

Aside from expat bankers keen on coming into the region, more Asian bankers are also returning home, many driven by the same doom and gloom currently shadowing the US and European markets.

“They [Asian-born bankers] feel the risk-reward trade-off is better and that they can add more value through local expertise and language skills,” Norton said.

By: Sabrina Zolkifi, Singapore

Moving to Singapore? Some useful links

Useful information for those moving to Singapore:

General - http://www.contactsingapore.sg/
Tourism - http://www.yoursingapore.com/
Cuisine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Singapore
Overview booklet - http://view.vcab.com/?vcabid=geaSeapnpSceaepe
Workshop for people moving to Singapore - http://www.singbound.sg/
Singapore Custom Regulations - http://www.customs.gov.sg/ and http://singapore.shipping-international.com/customs/
Work VISA - http://www.mom.gov.sg/
Education - and http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/admissions/international-students/general-info/ and http://view.vcab.com/?vcabid=geaSeapnpScnhnhr
Phone Directory - http://www.yellowpages.com.sg/
Road Directory - http://www.streetdirectory.com.sg/

Taxation:
General - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Singapore
Calculator - http://www.iras.gov.sg/irasHome/page01.aspx?id=88

Property:
http://www.propertyguru.com.sg/
http://www.iproperty.com.sg/

Shipping:
http://www.alliedpickfords.com.sg/
http://www.unigroupworldwide.com/
http://www.pricebreakshipping.com/

Pets:
License - http://www.ava.gov.sg/Services/LicensesPermitsAndCerts
Mover - http://www.petmovers.com.sg/

Courtesy: Tiffany Ng on LinkedIn

Singapore - most competitive IT industry in APAC

Singapore has sailed past Australia to become the most comepetitive economy in the Asia-Pacific in information technology(IT).

The results come from this year's edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit's IT Industry Competitiveness Index. The index benchmarks 66 economies on a series of indicators covering critical foundation areas for IT innovation, such as overall business environment, IT infrastructure and human capital.

• Singapore rose 6 places to become the third-most competitive IT market in the world


• Singapore achieved its third-place global ranking on the strength of its research-and-development environment, which is ranked fifth in the world


• Two thirds of the world's biggest 100 IT firms have a presence in Singapore


• Singapore also scored well because of its support for IT-industry development, where it is ranked 5th in the world


• Singapore was ranked 9th in the world and 2nd in the Asia-Pacific in 2009

Singapore banks still hiring, but cautiously, amid current gloom

Banks in Singapore say they will keep hiring staff despite the current gloom.

This is a breath of fresh air, amid the job cuts that have swept the United States and Europe in recent weeks. An estimated 50,000 jobs have so far been affected in banks such as Credit Suisse, HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Goldman Sachs.

As in 2008, banks worldwide are in the eye of the gathering financial storm.

However, despite their relatively upbeat outlook, banks here have added a caveat: Hiring in the next few months will be done more cautiously, in the light of the global economic uncertainties.

Source: Straits Time

Singapore banks on hiring drive!

What most of us in recruitment industry are in the know for the past few months became a headline news this morning as The Straits Times did a check on banks here in Singapore on their recruitment forecast for 2010.

On top of the pile was British-based Barclays Bank, which is leading the hiring resurgence with plans to add more than 500 staff here this year. Most will be employed in the bank’s technology section, in general operations and in finance.

Besides Barclays Bank, notable mentions are DBS with 500 positions, HSBC with 200 senior positions and ANZ Bank with more than 800 staff that will include the staff they will inherit from RBS' retail and commercial businesses.

From local to foreign, small players to big boys, almost all banks operating here have recruitment high on the agenda.

Morgan Stanley, State Bank of India, Standard Chartered Bank and OCBC Bank are just some of the others adding staff.

The outlook definitely seems very upbeat at least for the first half of the year and as for the rest of the year one has to wait and watch how the global economy sustains its recovery momentum.

For the moment, its happy billing days for the recruitment industry here in Singapore and here's wishing everyone a great 'Year of the Tiger' ahead.

*Happy hunting folks!*

Happy hiring days are here again!

Singapore: There's something positive, bullish and a general feeling of subdued excitement in everyone's outlook these past few weeks more so within the recruitment community.

Look around and you will see, hear and feel the difference in the air as compared to few months back.

News are abound with confident boosting plans, actions and positive forecast for hiring needs.

For some this week itself has brought in loads of business in the form of new assignments and projects that they've not seen in the past 2 months combine. Pipelines are very strong so are the billing numbers.

The feeling that I get when I spoke to couple of recruiters is that they are going to end with a strong quarter. Which needless to say is a very welcoming change indeed.

I am very confident that this positive momentum is going to see us through the remaining quarter and take off in Q1 2010 to something of a record of sort.

Some of the notable banks that are in hiring mode are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, StanChart, ANZ, Credit Suisse and even the locals banks.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is resorting to having specialist in-house recruiters for different streams by infusing new blood by hiring experience recruiters and also calling back some of their recruiters who were made redundant during the aftermath of BoA buying ML. They are now poised to hire financial experts and technocrats in the hundreds.

Barclays is as strong as ever with every recruiter fighting for a share of the headcount pie.

Credit Suisse on the underhand is looking for senior leaders in big numbers while they continue to build their offshore support strength.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group which was very much a small player, an unknown entity here in Singapore is bursting in its seams with their program to built a Super Regional Bank and now added to this aggressive growth plan they also have the huge task of hiring in hundreds resources for their integration with RBS (retail, wealth and commercial businesses).

StanChart is still in the news with their plans to hire 850 priority bankers while ANZ is planning to hire over 100 private bankers over the next 18 months.

The hiring market is bullish indeed but I am positive that we are still in the initial stage of the bottom curve and we can be prepared to see much more hiring frenzies in the months to come.

Happy hunting and bigger billings to all the recruiter folks out there!

StanChart to boost pool of relationship managers to 300

AS AFFLUENCE in Asia rises, Standard Chartered Bank is ramping up its wealth management business in Singapore.

In an expansion of its priority banking business here, the foreign bank yesterday said it planned to hire 300 relationship managers over the next three years, more than double its current number.

So far, it has hired 80, it said. Priority banking caters to individuals with $200,000 or more in net assets.

Other banks are also hiring more. HSBC says it is planning to take on about 100 staff in wealth management, while OCBC says it will continue hiring selectively.

Market watchers say this is a good time for banks that are relatively unaffected by the financial crisis to capture more market share.

Singapore's economy bounces back

There was a big sigh of relief for many Singaporeans as the economy expanded in the second quarter at its fastest rate in nearly 6 years.

Growth surpassed expectations, with a more than 20% rise from the previous quarter. All thanks to a surge in biomedical production.

Manufacturing is not exactly a huge part of Singapore's economy, but the island specialises in pharmaceuticals and high-end specialist manufacturing.

And increased demand for flu vaccines helped an already recession-proof sector to expand.

Exports, which are the real lifeblood of Singapore's economy, rose nearly 6% in May.

Shipments of raw materials such as iron ore are picking up. The reason, yet again, appears to be China.

The rest of the manufacturing sector is still struggling, however, and retail sales are still down. Domestic consumption is not picking up, so analysts say the worst may not be over yet.

- Mariko Oi, reporter, BBC Asia Business Report

Singapore employment outlook brightens

Singapore, June 2009: Could this represent a "green shoot" for the Singapore economy? According to Manpower's quarterly employment outlook survey, more employers are expecting to return to the hiring table over the next three months.

Of the 697 employers considered for the third quarter update, 12% expected to see an increase in their headcounts. A further 7% predicted a decrease in staff while the remaining respondents expected there would be no change in the third quarter.

Philippe Capsie, country manager of Manpower Singapore, says this represents a significant turnaround on the group's second quarter survey. Then, more employers expected to reduce headcount, rather than increase it. "While there is no quick fix in this current economy downturn, employers' hiring confidence is improving," he said. "Most employers are saying they will retain present staff in the third quarter, indicating that the worst may be behind us."

The survey considered seven distinct industry sectors. Of these, four (including manufacturing, finance and construction) predicted negative employment growth overall. In contrast, modest growth was predicted for the transportation, utilities and retail trade sectors.

Standard Chartered to hire 100 bankers

Singapore - Over the next 12 months, Standard Chartered will hire 100 private bankers to support its wealth management in fast-growing markets across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

While the bank did not elaborate further on its hiring plans, a bank source said most of its new hires will take place mostly in Asia, with the remaining going to Europe and the Middle East.

Peter Flavel, global head of its private bank unit, says Standard Chartered is in good shape despite the global downturn. "'As we're seeing a continuing increase in client demand for our private banking services, we will continue to invest in attracting talent to further strengthen our proposition," says Flavel.

He adds that the bank is scouting for talented candidates with excellent track records and consistency in fulfilling client expectations.

"'We are here to meet clients' needs. To achieve this, we need a certain type of relationship manager - someone with exceptional people and advisory skills, a strong team player, commitment to building long-term partnerships with clients."

About 100 out of 350 relationship managers in Standard Chartered worldwide are based in Singapore, according to a report by The Straits Times.

SG job ads rose 18.6% in Q1

Even as the economic recession deepended, the volume of job advertisements, interestingly, has picked up between January and March.

The number of job ads in Singapore rose 18.6 per cent, according to the Robert Walters Asia Job Index which tracks ad volumes, online and in print, for professional positions.

I guess, we can take this as good news considering the fact that everything else seems so 'bearish' at the moment.

Executives' pay most affected by downturn

Singapore - Top executives have been most affected by the wage freeze, a widely-adopted measure taken by companies to cut costs and retain employees.

A global survey conducted by Hay Group across 2,000 companies from 88 countries last month reports Singapore as the country hit hardest by the economic downturn in South East Asia.

Eighty percent of the Singapore respondents predict that they would not be able to hit their business targets, compared to the 21% in a previous Hay Group survey in November 2008.

The report also show Singapore as registering a 0% base salary increase, with clerical level and high-performing employees as they only two groups of exception toreceived modest pay rises.

Many companies believe that the downturn has the greatest bearing on clerical level workers,and the nominal pay increase is used to balance the cost of living.

Barclays set to hire in Singapore

BRITISH banking giant Barclays is sticking to its aggressive plan to hire up to 1,500 highly skilled staff by early 2011 in Singapore - despite the turmoil that has ravaged many financial institutions.

The bank wants project managers, applications development managers, and software and IT specialists for its Business Technology Centre at Changi Business Park Central launched last year.

Barclays has already hired 250 staff - mainly locals - and wants to increase this headcount to 650 by the end of this year.

The centre will allow Barclays to run its international cards and banking platforms out of Singapore.

The new staff are in addition to the 2,500 that Barclays already has for its investment banking and wealth management businesses in Singapore.

Hudson Report (Hiring & HR Trends) - Q1 2009

The Hudson Report Quarter1 2009: Singapore employers keep hiring cautious and headcount steady.

Key Highlights -

• 23% of respondents expect to increase hiring in this quarter, down from 37% in Q4 2008, with the majority of respondents (65%) who will keep headcount steady whilst 12% of respondents will decrease headcount;
• Expectations show a substantial decline year-on-year: the 23% of respondents planning to grow headcount this quarter compared with 51% in Q1 2008;
• Expected salary increases for new managerial hires remain healthy, with 39% who will pay a 6-10% increase, and 32% who will pay 11-20% increase;
• Most respondents will give out year-end bonus payments, with only 17% of respondents planning to pay no bonuses;
• Across all sectors, 47% of respondents forecast that their company’s performance will be excellent or good in 2009, while 7% say it will be poor;
• Freezing headcount, along with global headcount approvals and strategic hiring, are HR strategies most likely to be adopted in response to the economic downturn.
  
  Click here to download Hudson Report

Singapore Recruiter roundtable debates – November’08

Recruiter Roundtable Debates is organised by eFinancialCareers.Sg and attended by senior internal recruiters from several of Singapore’s leading financial institutions.

Some of the key issues and findings emerging from this week’s discussion are –

• Both Employers and candidates becoming more cautious in the wake of the global financial crisis
• Job market remains in comparatively good shape and is still attracting foreign talent
• Hiring levels are found to be generally lower than last year but no savage job cuts like NY or London
• Growth sectors – risk, audit and compliance
• Strong demand for advisory and relationship manager roles in Private Banking
• In-house HR/recruitment teams are increasingly placing emphasis on internal recruitment strategies and reducing reliance on agencies.

***Happy hunting folks***

Impact of Recession on Search Firms – Singapore context

Disclaimer: This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer - Joe Neitham

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Economic slow down, Financial Tsunami, down turn, recession, call it what you like but we seems to be heading for a definite period of persistent rise in uncertainties in the days ahead. We are experiencing what some would even call the worst recession since the Great Depression and the similarities between the Great Depression and the current recession aka Credit Crunch recession are very similar. Much like the credit crunch today, the Great Depression began with a stock market crash and the eventual meltdown of the financial system. The bad news for us is that the current recession is not over yet by anyone’s imagination and the longer the recession prolonged the closer we are to a state of deep and painful depression.

From recruitment perspective, recession does have direct consequences on recruitment plans and the severity of the recession dictates the surge or decline in recruitment activities. We are today probably experiencing the half way point of recession as it is expected to prolong till 2013 as seen from surveys around the globe.

As such, measures taken by different organisation across varied industry, in preparation for the bad times to come, ranges from the mild to the drastic – pay cut, hiring freeze, lay offs and retrenchment are the buzz words today.

Here at home in Singapore we’ve seen and heard of organisation such as CLSA resorting to pay cuts in order to avoid retrenching their staff and in most financial institutions we are seeing hiring freeze (at least in most part of the business) as the norm of the day such as JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered Bank, etc. Retrenchment as the last resort is underway at DBS (Nov 14, 2008 The Straits Times), Citibank (Nov 19, 2008 Biz Times), HSBC (Wall Street Journal - Nov 17, 2008), Merrill Lynch (Oct 22, 2008 The Straits Times), UBS (Oct 22, 2008 The Straits Times), Standard Chartered Bank (Oct 29, 2008 The Straits Times). I have a feeling that we’ve not seen the last of such retrenchment activities in the banks as mentioned above and some of these banks will continue the next round of lay offs soon if not in the immediate future.

Outside of banks, some of the organisation that has taken lay offs route are Motorola, Nokia, GAP, NOL, AIA, IM Flash Tech., YKK, Allied Technologies Ltd. The list is expected to grow as many organisation need to resort to trimming their staff strength in order to sustain.

In the midst of all the doom and glooms around it is still heartening to know that organisations here such as Singtel and NTUC are declaring not to resort to lay offs, while banks like Barclays, Standard Chartered bank, and ANZ are still hiring actively if not aggressively.

Types of search firms

The past few days I’ve been meeting up with few recruitment consultants and I guess their interpretation of the current recruitment scene varies from one to the other and that’s purely because of the space in which they operate. Typically we have the following types of search firms here in Singapore –

Executive Search Firms: These are the true search firms where they only take on retained search. Typical search firm will have a strong Research team with strong market mapping capabilities and they do not have any particular industry that they limit themselves to but on roles – only senior management level. Some of the leading search firms in Singapore are -
· Egon Zehnder

· Spencer Stuart
· Amrop Hever Group
· Heidrick & Struggles
· Russell Reynolds

Recruitment Consulting Firms (Hybrid – Contingency/Retainer): These are firms that are strong on contingency however most will also take on 10%-20% retainer jobs. Consultants here are strong on end-to-end consulting and 2-5 consultants will share 1-3 researcher (only name generation and market mapping) and in some cases resourcers (Identify and shortlist candidates – email/phone/face-to-face). Focus on middle to senior level candidates. Some of them are -
· Talent2
· Hudson
· Robert Walters
· Derwent
· Korn Ferry

Recruitment Agency (Contingency - Contract/Perm): These are agencies that are typically focused on verticals and most of them are in Information Technology. Traditionally they only do contracting where they outsource engineers to client site and manage their payrolls. Lately, few of these agencies do not wish to miss out on the lucrative contingency business so they have dedicated consultants that only do permanent placements. In such places, often they will have dedicated Sales/Business Development (client facing) team that are supported by strong Resourcers in the back office. Some of the leading agencies are –
· A-IT
· Optimum
· Comtel
· Emerio

Trends in recruitment process

Recruitment Outsourcing:

In the past 2 years alone we have seen a rapid growth in recruitment outsourcing, also known as HRO(Human Resource Outsourcing), RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), TAM (Talent Acquisition Management), etc and basically to quote the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association

, "Recruitment Process Outsourcing is when a provider acts as a company's internal recruitment function for a portion or all of its jobs. RPO providers manage the entire recruiting/hiring process from job profiling through the on-boarding of the new hire, including staff, technology, method and reporting. A properly managed RPO will improve a company's time to hire, increase the quality of the candidate pool, provide verifiable metrics, reduce cost and improve governmental compliance.”

Some of the organisation that are outsourcing their recruitment functions in Singapore are –
· Credit Suisse to Alexander Mann Solutions
· Barclays to Resource Solutions/Robert Walters -
· Deutsche bank to Alexander Mann Solutions
· UBS to Talent2
· Merrill Lynch to Talent2

Corporate/In-house Recruiters:
For sometime now we’ve had HR folks taking on recruitment as a sub function and unfortunately these does not work well when you are recruiting in volumes. Some of the banks in Singapore that are increasingly relying on in-house recruiters are – ANZ, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered Bank, RBS, etc. Most of these in-house recruiters are from search background with many years of end-to-end recruitment experience under their belts. Obviously, they know what they are doing and they will definitely give some their vendors a run for their money.

Talent management solutions:
Most of the big banks here these days have implemented Talent management solutions in the recruitment process. Some of the leading solutions that are in used here are -

· Taleo (Clients: ANZ, Credit Suisse, JPMC),

· Brassring (Client: UBS),

· Recruitmax (Client: Barclays),

· JobsDB Dimension (Client: SCB).

Preferred Supplier Panel:

Gone are the days when banks will utilise the services of any and every recruitment firms out there. These days’ banks are more selective with whom they want to associate themselves and whose service they would like to avail. Thus was born the Preferred Supplier List or Panel, where out of maybe 70-90 firms only 10-20 are short listed to be included in the panel. Every in-house recruiter as well as the hiring managers is generally mandate to only use those agencies that are in the list.

Banks that uses Talent Management Solutions invariably will have their preferred supplier list and the system will not allow you to submit resumes if you are not in the panel as a registered user.

The future of recruitment industry

As more and more organisation engage on developing their own in-house resource capabilities their focus then will be to hire directly and reduce dependencies on headhunters/recruitment agencies in the long run. Today many in-house recruiters are well equipped and trained on direct sourcing through different mediums for both active and passive candidates – Networking tools(LinkedIn, Facebook, Zoominfo etc), Job site Database search (eFinancialcareers, Monster, etc), Googling (using Boolean strings), etc. What this translates to is substantial lost of requirements for recruitment agencies. The future of recruitment industry therefore will be decided by those firms/agencies that are willing to evolve and adapt to the changing demands of the industry. Added to this, recession will result in the number of jobs being drastically reduced and everyone therefore will be forced to fight for the few jobs that are available and survival will very much depend on getting those few available jobs from the client and filling them.

- Agencies will have reduced job sheets: Fewer jobs due to recession and those that remains most of them will be filled by in-house recruiters. Only hard-to-fill niche or senior roles will be given to agencies.
- Agency to focus on building strong search capabilities: To fill those hard-to-fill niche or senior roles agencies must equip themselves with strong search capability to beat the fierce competition and stand out from the rest.
- Smaller/boutique agencies driven out of business: In the interim smaller agencies who are without any serious requirements will be left out, eventually they will have to close shop due to lack of funds. However, those smaller agencies that are focus on contracting with more than 50 contractors will survive at least for the period when the contract still runs.
- Only the big boys with strong capital reserves will survive: The big Recruitment Consulting firms with diverse portfolio will survive and ride out this rough patch as they are not dependent only on few particular clients in particular industry/sector.
- Strong relationship + strong delivery capability will thrive: In the end, it all boils down to the depth of ones relationship with clients because relationship will help in requirements coming to you. However, relationship alone does not suffice and what will set a survivor apart from the rest will be the strength in their delivery capability – high percentage of successful job filled against number of jobs.

Is your firm geared up and prepared for the long haul and ready to ride out the recession? What plans of actions are being put in place not only to survive but excel in these challenging times?

Should the negative trends continue for the next two quarters number of consultants will find themselves in the deficit from which recovery will be a difficult task. I believe that this will eventually result in many consultants losing their jobs sometime during the end of 2nd and beginning of 3rd quarter of 2009 and many cowboy agencies will also be force out of business. So how each companies responds to these new economic conditions will ultimately “separate the wheat from the chaff”.

On the bright side, experience and big billing consultants will not only survive but continue to do well and for them pots of gold waits at the rainbow’s end and this is what we know as “survival of the fittest”.

PS: Feel free to share with everyone your thoughts and take on this topic by leaving your comments here or you may write in to me confidentially at neitham(at)gmail(dot)com.

***Happy hunting folks***

Robert Walters Asia Job Index Q3 2008

SEASONALITY AND THE CREDIT CRUNCH HIT ADVERTISING VOLUMES.

Robert Walters, the international recruitment consultancy, today publishes its Asia Job Index for the third quarter of 2008. The Robert Walters Asia Job Index tracks advertisement volumes for professional positions across the leading job boards and national newspapers in Hong Kong and Singapore.

KEY FINDINGS:

• Total job advertisements posted in Hong Kong in Q3 2008 8.5% lower than Q2 2008
• Total job advertisements posted in Singapore in Q3 2008 10.2% lower than Q2 2008
• Reduced advertising spend a direct result of a focus on cost management across many sectors
• Increasing prevalence of contract hiring
• Emphasis on recruitment of sales-focused candidates who will aggressively drive revenues
• IT personnel continue to be in strong demand with Singapore businesses in particular continuing to implement complex IT projects
• Organisations of all types still strongly committed to growing operations in Asia-Pacific region

Mark Ellwood, Managing Director at Robert Walters in Singapore, comments: "The Singapore economy has so far held up relatively well year to date in light of the global economic challenges. However, it was the first Asian country to announce it is in a technical recession so it is no surprise to see a reduction in the number of jobs advertised in the 3rd quarter. Despite this, there is still demand for high quality candidates as good talent is always hard to find. The financial services sector has certainly been affected and organizations are focusing on costs which will continue into next year but opportunities for talented middle management professionals will still remain."

Firms hiring continues despite potential recession

Companies in Singapore are not putting their hiring plans on hold despite recession threats. According to the Achieve Report on Hiring Trends 2H 2008, 76% of employers did not expect a change in hiring activity in the wake of the recession. Of the 24% of respondents who foresaw a change in hiring activity, 11% stated they would reduce hiring, 10% would freeze employment and 3% would retrench workers. Among the sectors, the retail, hospitality and finance industries were the most confident about the potential recession.

The good news is that 73% of finance firms planned to stick to their intended hiring plans.

Turmoil in the financial industry - Round up!

The sub-prime mortgage crisis and its affect on the global market have never been seen at such a proportion, perhaps but for the great depression.

The exposure to the credit crunch which started last year and was felt by most leading investment banks notably UBS and Bear Stearns ripples across the globe and is still felt till this week but more in the shape of a tsunami now.

The latest being Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch which over the weekend became the next high profile scalps. Bear Stearns was the first billion-dollar casualty which was bought out by JPMorgan with the US Federal Reserve’s intervention.

Prior to that we had Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, who collectively controls $5 trillion in mortgages, had to be bailed out by the long-suffering US taxpayer.

On Sept. 14, 2008, Merrill announced that it had agreed to be purchased by the Bank of America, rather than run the risk of being pulled under by turmoil surrounding the industry.

Merrill's logo -- a bull -- had long symbolized the fundamental optimism of Wall Street, and its leaders had often been viewed as spokesman for the entire industry. And folks in the street corner and in the office lifts are amazed and stunned that an institution of the size of Merrill Lynch (founded in 1914) could end in such a situation! Just for a minute ponder on this fact that we are never going to have Merrill Lynch again!

Over the weekend, Lehman Brothers, a major American investment banker, has filed paperwork for bankruptcy. It would be the largest collapse of an investment firm in 18 years. Lehman attempted to find a buyer over the weekend but it met with no success.

The latest development is that BARCLAYS has finalised the acquisition of Lehman Brothers' investment banking and capital markets businesses in the US for $2.2 billion.

Goldman Sachs so far has navigated the turmoil better than its peers, avoiding big write-downs. Yet Goldman Sachs reported a 70 per cent plunge in quarterly profit and I am wondering if it will be too preposterous to declare that GS is the potential next in line?

For me, the worst was the fate of AIG as I find it difficult to imagine if the largest insurance company in the world was to collapse? Most importantly who all will it drag along to her grave? Fortunately, the US Federal Reserve gave them a lifeline with an offer of $85 bln and thus preventing what would have been the biggest scalp over the sub-prime fallout!

Nearer at home, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) joined its global counterparts in acting to reassure jittery markets by declaring that it was prepared to inject additional liquidity if the situation so warrants. It is also heartening to note that all the three local banks, DBS, OCBC and UOB have insignificant exposures.

My worry is, for how much longer can we remain an island shielded from the sub-prime crisis and does the ripple affects that we are experience now became a big wave and hit us like a Tsunami? Do we have alternate and contingency plans should such a drastic fate befalls us? Are we prepared? “Que sera, sera, What will be, will be.”

- by Joe Neitham, 6:15PM, 17th Sept, 2008