Related News:
Commodity Pay for Bankers, Traders, Analysts Jumps 12% as Vacancies Up 70%
Salaries on the U.K. commodity desks of investment banks, trading houses and utilities expanded 10 percent to 12 percent in the first half from a year ago as vacancies jumped 70 percent, headhunter Morgan McKinley said.
“The candidate market remains tight due to reduced levels of hiring over the last two years resulting in a skills gap” and as U.K. companies have begun to expand operations in the industry, Simon Godfrey, manager of the commodities division at Morgan McKinley, said in an e-mailed statement.
Average commodity prices rose 18 percent in the first half from a year earlier as the world economy revived from the global financial crisis and Chinese consumption surged, fueling demand for traders and analysts. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- biggest U.S. bank, agreed in February to pay $1.7 billion for the metal and oil activities and European power and gas assets of RBS Sempra Commodities LLP, a London Metal Exchange member.
The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials touched a high for the year Jan. 6 as the economy in China, the largest user of copper, iron ore and coal, grew almost 12 percent.
Professionals are also finding jobs more quickly because of the shortage of candidates, according to Morgan McKinley’s first twice-yearly report on trends in the industry issued yesterday. Individuals in the U.K. find a new position on average 58.5 days after registering for a job, down from 64.9 days in 2009.
Lack of Staff
A lack of skilled staff for trading and sales jobs “looks set to continue for the remainder of 2010,” the report said. The majority of new permanent jobs in the first half were focused on oil and crude products, representing 41 percent of the total, with about a quarter in metals, it said.
Banks also sought to hire staff for iron-ore operations as Vale SA, BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group, the biggest exporters, forced steelmakers to abandon a 40-year custom of pricing the material annually in favor of quarterly agreements. Steelmakers including ThyssenKrupp AG, Germany’s largest, said they were studying the use of derivatives to fix future costs.
The iron ore market was one area “where several of the larger banks have looked to recruit talent in order to take advantage of the growth of the spot market,” the report said.
China imported 309.4 million metric tons of iron ore in the first six months of 2010, 4.1 percent more than in the same period last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The price of the ore in China, used to produce steel, rose to $186.50 a ton in April, the highest for data from Steel Business Briefing on Bloomberg going back to November 2008.
To contact the reporter on the story: Anna Stablum in London at astablum@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page