US ‘job refugees’ turn to China

http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14792508

Venkatesan Vembu/ DNA MONEY | Friday, 07 November , 2008, 08:44

Hong Kong: The worsening recession in the US is driving “economic refugees,” including Wall Street bankers and financial managers, to look for career opportunities in China. However, recruiters and trainers who know the China market say their chances of making it in the dragon country are lean.

Andrew Hupert, who teaches International Negotiation at New York University’s Shanghai campus and is a consultant for leading multinationals, says, “Lately, I’ve been hearing from lots of people, including experienced bankers and financial managers, who see the Wall Street economy falling off the cliff, are convinced that China is the answer to their prayers and are curious about the chances of finding gainful employment here.”

Will China come out to rescue the world?

“Right now, the enquiries are coming largely from professionals in the finance and real estate industries, but pretty soon we’ll see others from a broader cross-section of professions and industries,” he says.


“Some of these ‘job refugees’ say they have always considered relocating to China as a secondary plan, but are now seeing the rising opportunity cost of not acting on that,” says Hupert, who advises multinationals on their China marketing strategy.

Recession looms large, warns IMF's Lipsky

Nancy Lui Neumann, managing partner at Hong Kong Executive Search, also sees a rising trend of professionals gravitating towards China and other parts of Asia to beat the downturn.

“In recent times, Wall Street investment banking professionals have even begun looking for opportunities in other spaces like corporate risk management and marketing,” says Neumann.

“These professionals used to see the investment banking industry as the goose that laid the golden egg… Now they see it a little differently, and I believe there will be more and more executives wanting to test-drive the Asian market,” she adds.

More India business stories

But the passage to China is unlikely to work out smoothly for many of these job seekers.

“This may be the beginning of a very one-sided love affair,” says Hupert. And why?

“Wall Street-style finance was never highly respected in China - and after everything that’s happened this year, it’s sort of looked upon like a war crime.”

In any case, China doesn’t have developed, deep financial markets of the sort Hong Kong, New York or London do. “And the kind of financial infrastructure that these Wall Street professionals are used to working with doesn’t exist here.”

Compounding their problem is the fact that the Chinese economy has problems of its own. “There’s a good chance that the worst of the economic downturn in China will occur when western economies start to recover, perhaps 18 months down the line,” says Hupert.

More critically, in China, the trend is of greater ‘localisation’. Chinese professionals who can be hired at much lower remuneration are thus moving up the ladder to occupy middle management positions - “the same posts that a lot of these ‘Western transplants’ see themselves taking up.”

“So, I’m very sceptical that these established finance professionals can transplant themselves into a ‘pure China’ environment,” Hupert adds.

There are other considerations that work to the disadvantage of these ‘job refugees’ and inhibit recruiters from hiring them.

More India business stories

“For one thing, these ‘newbies’ aren’t going to hit the ground running in China: some expats who come over take a long time to get the hang of things here.” More strikingly, when the US economy recovers and Wall Street and western banks and western companies start hiring again, “there’s a good chance these people will leave - with the blueprint for your business and quite literally the keys to the kingdom!” says Hupert.

Under license from www.3dsyndication.com