The many investment bankers from
Citigroup Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co. getting pink slips this week will be thrust into a job market already saturated with thousands of unemployed bankers. Where will they go?
Randy Gulian, CEO of executive recruiter
InSearch Worldwide, says his firm has seen an influx of resumes from bankers who've been laid off or think they might be. He says "the stars" -- those bankers who led deal teams or regularly brought in business -- are mainly transitioning to private equity and hedge funds. According to
Bloomberg, more than 45 banking executives have landed at PE and hedge funds this year.
But what about becoming corporate dealmakers? As we noted in our report on
corporate development careers last fall, there's always some movement of i-bankers in that direction, and we've reported a couple of higher-profile transitions lately. Citigroup's former vice chairman of global banking
Mike Schell joined Alcoa Inc. as executive VP, business development and law in May; he was a longtime adviser to Alcoa. And 30-year I-bank veteran
Eric Cohen recently took over as head of corporate development for Dolby Laboratories Inc.
Still, most corporate deal teams are small, and even with strategic acquirers driving M&A activity in 2008, Gulian doesn't expect that to change.
"Corporates are going to continue to have small high-level teams, and they're going to buy the rest of what they need. In-house teams are not going to become teams of thousands," says Gulian. "They may do some incremental hiring, but that means a seven -man team as opposed to a five-man team."
We've got lines out to other recruiters, and we'll let you know what they've got to say. We'd also like to hear your thoughts on the layoffs, the job market or anything else career related. You can leave your comments below. In the meantime, here's a link to
The Deal's career center. It seems traffic is up. -
Suzanne Stevens
Join Corporate Dealmaker's LinkedIn forum
Juergen Lasowski
And the winners are...
Having worked with i-bankers, corporates, PE and VC people for more than 20 years I can tell you that laid off i-bankers fit best in PE shops both culturally and comp-wise.
With the few exceptions noted in the article, ibankers do not fit with corporates. The exception is at the very junior level, where the compensation fit is mostly OK. Cultural issues can still be a problem for i-bank refugess who cannot adapt to slow pace and rigid hierarchy typical to most corporate Bus Dev jobs.