THEY ARE? THAT'S NEWS TO ME!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bankers-embracing-zero-salary-tech-220030352.html
It was February 2012 and banks, dealing with the fallout from the credit crisis, had culled more than 230,000 jobs the year before. Stu Taylor, the London-based global head of matched principal trading at UBS Group AG, figured he better get out. So he left his seven-figure salary and risked his life savings on a technology startup. He and three partners “went into a zero-salary moment” setting up Algomi Ltd., a bond sales management platform to be used by traders, portfolio managers and investors. Three years later, the 42-year-old says the far longer hours to bring home a fraction of his previous pay are worth it. “I enjoy what I’m doing, we’re creating something I think is making a difference, and it’s mine.”
As investment firms including UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Deutsche Bank AG have curtailed or shuttered lines of business, particularly in debt trading, the contractions have prompted former bankers to quit finance and put their experience to use in the new field of financial technology, or fintech. Capitalizing on the changing regulatory environment, such companies offer risk management, data analytics, trading platforms and other services often previously performed by humans.
“Seven out of 10 conversations I have with investment bankers now end with them asking me to keep them in mind for jobs in technology,” said Atlanta-based Eric Anderson, who leads the financial-technology practice at Egon Zehnder International Inc., the executive search firm hired by Standard Chartered Plc to replace Chief Executive Officer Peter Sands. “That almost never happened five years ago.”
North America had 211,500 fewer bond brokering jobs and other roles defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as credit intermediation as of January, versus the start of 2008. By contrast, there are currently more than 500,000 job openings in areas such as software development and cybersecurity, many of which didn’t exist a decade ago, White House data show. An annual review of the U.S. banking system by McKinsey & Co. in December tallied more than 12,000 startups focused on banking businesses.
Four of the biggest U.S. and U.K. banks have reduced total headcount by almost 350,000 since the beginning of 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll released in January found 83 percent of respondents say the banking industry will continue to cut jobs this year....
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