We are back from the Christmas holidays and wish all our readers, clients and candidates a very Happy New Year and much success in 2010.
On the first working day of the new decade, we are wondering what 2010 will hold in store...
The eFinancialCareers web site makes tentative predictions for the year ahead. They believe increased M&A activity will increase headcount in the banks. They see an unleashing of pent up demand in ECM as well as hiring across government bond desks. There will be an increased diversification in electronic trading of credit derivatives across exchanges and dark pools. There'll be bank hiring across commodities. And finally, hiring across post-trade processing services will increase.
Our clients sell news, data, research, software and technology to banks, investment managers and hedge funds. If the banks are hiring then there is more demand for our clients' services, albeit there's generally a delay between the banks hiring and their suppliers beefing up their teams. The first quarter of trading (Q4, 2009) was positive for Hawk Search with a good flow of hiring mandates, however, we are not overly bullish about 2010. There are no underlying macro-economic factors to suggest we have moved into recovery. There will be hiring and, if the eFinancialCareers predictions come true, our clients will have more people to sell to in 2010. This may support sign-off for new headcount.
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