While Brexit doesn’t seem to be working out all that well for the United Kingdom, it’s a windfall for financial centers across Europe. The globe’s biggest banks and capital-management funds are shifting thousands of jobs to Dublin, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Luxembourg City and Paris from London.
Greed, for lack of a better word, is apolitical, unswayed by nationalism or emotion. So financial firms started planning on the first day for a worst-case, no-deal Brexit scenario that ends “passporting” rights for cross-border money transfers and other capital market transactions.
While Boris, Moggsy and Nigel are all convinced only a no-deal Brexit will make Britain great again, global money managers are a bit more skeptical since they deal in, you know, empirical data, research and facts.
Fact No. 1 – The total UK market is 60 million.
Fact No. 2 – The total EU market is north of 500 million.
Fact No. 3 – The EU wins.
Brexit has foreign investors wanting to know if Britain has “lost its mind,” Tina Fordham, chief global political analyst for Citigroup told CNN this week: “Even though … I’ve been writing about magical thinking in politics and anticipating all of this – I, too, am astonished that reason is not prevailing.”
We thought it was prudent to take a look at what’s available career-wise post-Brexit and what might interest our audience of highly skilled internationals who likely won’t be welcome in the new and even greater Great Britain. We started to include job openings in multiple cities, but there are so many in Frankfurt the post would have been 5,000 words. So, we’re doing posts for each city.
Let’s go to ….
Frankfurt
(Editor’s note: All these are United States-based banks or investment-management firms. Most – but not all – of these openings require candidates to be fluent in business German and business/colloquial English.)
BANK OF AMERICA
Bank of America has only a couple of Frankfurt postings, but this one is brand new:
Duties include:
- Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the Global Banking & Markets product spectrum
- Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the portfolio at the client, industry, and macro levels in order to assess risk and craft value added solutions that balance risk
- Independently assess the credit worthiness, including due diligence of prospective borrowers and/or trading counter-parties and establish appropriate terms and conditions to mitigate risk
- Structure transactions and negotiate credit documentation including credit agreements, amendments, ISDAs, and CSAs
- Ensuring granularity of the portfolio with specific reference to targets for net country/credit capital, legally binding commitments, total exposure and asset quality
- Establish appropriate internal risk ratings for clients and implement accurate adjustments throughout the client’s credit life cycle
- Develop, maintain, and manage internal relationships with business partners, including Corporate and Investment Bankers, Sales & Trading, Risk Management, Syndications, and Legal
This is a pretty demanding credit risk/assessment/underwriting position with requirements including an understanding of EMEA market dynamics. If you don’t know what EMEA stands for, this isn’t for you.
The good news is, you don’t have to speak German, but you do have to be fluent in Microsoft Office. (Like, who isn’t?)
BLACKROCK
Fund manager BlackRock is pivoting to Paris.
But it does have jobs in Frankfurt such as this one:
Fund Accounting Oversight (ETFs) – Vice President
Duties include:
- Instruct, oversee and manage external fund accountant, including fund distributions, financial reporting, special valuations and income / expense items
- Provide an authoritative source of business, industry and technical fund administration expertise on functional and process requirements
- Oversee and monitor delegates, act as key BlackRock contact point for delegates, perform reviews and annual onsite visits
- Build strong relationships with contributing business areas within BlackRock to actively engage and lead fund launch and product change. Especially maintain a strong working relationship with Investment Managers, Product Tax, Product Managers, Legal and Compliance, Risk Manager
- Act as point person for fund and corporate auditors
- Represent BlackRock in the German marketplace, industry and, participate relevant industry working groups
- Ensure team approach is consistent with global best practice for controls, oversight and management of vendors and production of fund asset valuations and where appropriate provides input and creates initiatives to enhance such processes
This is BlackRock, the largest asset-management company on earth, with about $5 trillion under management. This firm is highly rated by current and past employees. To have a shot, you need a serious, serious CV. Also, you must be fluent in German and English.
CITIGroup
Citi has at least 25 positions posted in Frankfurt.
The most current listing is for:
Regulatory Finance Coordinator (M/F/D)
Duties include:
- Day-to-day management of Finance’s relationship with the German regulators
- Provision of regular updates on regulatory matters to CGME’s Governance process (Supervisory Board, Management Board and sub-committees)
- Management of Finance regulatory deliverables outside of standard BAU regulatory reporting (e.g. query management / ad hoc requests)
- Management and oversight of significant annual regulatory initiatives and reviews, which include ICAAP and SREP, Pillar 3, Recovery and Resolution Planning, Regulatory Inspections, strategic planning
- Oversight of new regulatory rules and requirements, assessment of their impact on the franchise and monitoring of their implementation
In addition to all the obvious educational and specialization of regulatory knowledge, candidates must be fluent in written and spoken English and German. “Communication in German is essential to talk to the German regulator,” according to the Citi website.
GOLDMAN SACHS
Goldman Sachs has a lot of jobs open in Frankfurt, by our count at least 15.
They include:
Finance, Legal Entity Controller, Associate, Frankfurt
As a Legal Entity Controller, you will take complete ownership of the financial reporting and monitoring for a range of our German legal entities. You will develop an in-depth understanding of these entities, including their business strategies, products and associated technical accounting and disclosure requirements.
As a Legal Entity Controller you will be responsible for:
- Preparation and analysis of monthly and quarterly financial reporting under US GAAP
- Preparation and analysis of annual financial statements under German GAAP, including resolving complex technical accounting issues and disclosure requirements and liaising with external auditors
- Interaction with Financial Reporting in New York
- Participation in global project work including system developments, implementation of new products and new regulatory developments
https://youtu.be/iHCWFouyUhM
MORGAN STANLEY
Morgan Stanley has added 14 positions this month in Frankfurt.
They include:
Credit Risk, Financial Institutions & eTrading – Vice President
As the credit risk VP, you’re responsible for:
• Oversight of the credit analysis, credit rating assignment and risk management for financial institutions and NBFI’s, in particular performing credit due diligence and internal rating assignment as well as setting and monitoring of credit risk limits
• Monitoring and understanding how macro-economic, industry or company-specific trends impact the credit quality of counter-parties or group of counter-parties
• Transaction analysis and credit approval, including review and approval of credit risk mitigation and documentation requirements
• Point person for Sales & Trading Division for management of credit risk resulting from transactions executed via electronic trading
• Monitoring and analysis of credit risk and credit exposure sensitivities of electronic trading clients, including review and analysis of credit stress testing results
• Close coordination with other departments including Legal and Compliance, Operations, Regulatory Controllers and Capital Groups as well as Firm Risk employees in other Morgan Stanley offices
You must have a finance degree and a CV with some experience. But you DON’T have to speak German.
https://youtu.be/hAWUOCzAUT8
JP MORGAN CHASE
JP Morgan Chase has 18 jobs open in Frankfurt at the moment.
The most current listings include several for students including:
Corporate – Working Student Payroll, Pension & Benefits (m/f) – Frankfurt
Duties include:
- preparation of the payroll, including preparing benefits
- assisting in the on- and off-boarding of employees
- assisting in the preparation of reference letters
- reporting (we assume this means financial reporting to regulators)
This position is open to MBA, finance and economics students.
We’ll have more posts about career opportunities in Amsterdam, Paris and other financial capitals as we get closer to 29 March and Brexit.
