City jobs on the up as London emerges as millionaire banker capital

RA Now

November saw 2,500 new jobs created in the City, the highest number in over seven months and a six percentage point increase on the previous month, figures show.

Traditionally a quiet time of year for hiring ahead of bonuses being announced before Christmas, November 2013 saw the number of jobs created increase by 38 percentage points compared with the same month last year, according to City recruiter Astbury Marsden.

This comes as the European Banking Authority published figures on the remuneration within the banking sector, which revealed that the number of bankers earning more than €1,000,000 in 2012 numbers 2,714 in the UK, the highest among the member states. The country with the next highest number of millionaire bankers in 2012 was Germany, with 212 earning six figures last year.

Astbury Marsden said the jump in general vacancies in the City of London may be the first signs of a general increase in activity.

Banks in particular have benefitted from an improvement in investors’ appetite, with an increase of about 10% in the value of the FTSE 100 since the start of this year, and a 9% increase in the numbers of merger and acquisitions targeting European countries, according to investment bank platform Dealogic.

“This is the long-awaited positive indicator that the City has been hoping for,” said Mark Cameron, COO at Astbury Marsden. “We have seen more hiring to support growing activity in equities and equities derivatives trading. In particular we are seeing banks put increased resources into the more specialist equity derivative products and into their quantitative trading programmes.”

Another impetus for increased recruitment in the City is a number of impending regulatory requirements, in particular the introduction of the new European Market Infrastructure Regulation rules that will require firms to use central clearing facilities and report trades in a wider range of derivatives transactions including over the counter trades. This is prompting banks to expand their specialist regulatory teams.