Financial news Ireland – job market news, recruitment & career trends in Ireland for the finance sector

Amid one of the worst employment markets in living memory, beleaguered lender Anglo Irish Bank is due to unveil a wide-ranging cost-cutting exercise next month, which could see hundreds of jobs lost. What chance do its employees have of finding new positions? The bank has been working with external consultant Deloitte since May to determine the scale of a programme designed to shrink costs “to match the balance sheet size”. October... Read more

The 230 redundancies confirmed by Anglo Irish Bank today has to rank among the least surprising announcements of recent times – even if final number of job losses does fall at the lower end of predictions. However, rather ominously, more are likely going forward. Of the 230 job losses, 110 will be in Ireland, while 95 fall on the UK operations and 25 in the US. The bank also says that... Read more

Bank of Ireland has transferred over 2,000 staff from its retail banking division in the Republic to the group's central support functions in the face of reduced business activity. Elsewhere, total headcount has reduced by just 5%, but a hiring freeze remains and bonuses have been slashed as part of an ongoing cost-cutting exercise. "Staff numbers are down as a result of a recruitment freeze, a policy of non-replacement of... Read more

The message to Irish students hoping to move into financial services upon graduation next year is very clear – look overseas. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the overarching grim tidings within the Irish banking sector, domestic institutions like Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish and AIB have cancelled their graduate intake for 2010. "The domestic market is pretty much closed for recruitment and that is reflective of the situation affecting the... Read more

Ireland has again fallen victim to Royal Bank of Scotland's wildly swinging axe, after the bank revealed it cutting 108 jobs within its asset financing unit, Lombard. RBS has deemed the division "non-core". This follows job cuts at Ulster Bank and mortgage lender First Active, both arms of the Scottish bank, over the last year. 84 of the redundancies will hit the Republic of Ireland, with the remaining 24 positions going from... Read more

Ireland's fund administration industry is booming but (whisper it) some recruiters are worried a shortage of skilled graduates could put the brakes on future growth. Assets under administration in Ireland topped €1.4 trillion last year, predominantly hedge and alternative investment funds, says Gary Palmer, chief executive of the Irish Funds Industry Association. "Irish domiciled schemes grew by 25% and the administration of non-Irish domiciled schemes by 40% last year. Similar growth is... Read more

Given that Anglo Irish Bank went cap-in-hand to the government for €1.5bn shortly before Christmas, you might have thought it wasn’t the best place to work. However, staff at the bank have received both pay rises and bonuses going into the new year. The Irish Independent reports that junior level staff at AIB have been awarded pay rises, in contrast to most other areas of Irish financial services. Middle management... Read more

In spite of the ongoing problems affecting Ireland’s domestic banks, it seems they have so far been in the relatively unique position of holding off making any significant headcount reductions. Thanks to Bank of Ireland, that may be about to change. In a bid to cut costs as the financial crisis continues to bite, Ireland’s biggest bank is thought to be considering making one in 10 of its Irish staff redundant,... Read more

Things aren’t looking so great for employees at the Big Four accountancy firms in Ireland. After KPMG’s revelation that it would not be extending the contracts of qualifying trainees this year, PricewaterhouseCoopers has now announced a 10% cut in salaries for the majority of its staff. Not surprisingly, a lot of them are exploring other options. PwC employs over 500 people in Ireland and says that the pay cuts are... Read more

Good news: 300 new jobs are being created in Dublin’s International Financial Services District. However, they are being earmarked for people from disadvantaged backgrounds that would normally have been excluded from the financial sector. The National College of Ireland has rolled out an educational initiative which aims to give 300 members of disadvantaged communities - in areas like inner city areas of Dublin and the docklands - jobs in the... Read more

Bank of Ireland features quite prominently on the league table of financial services redundancies so far this year, but other Irish banks have yet to register union Unite's job cuts round up. The bank has chopped 1,035 people between January and April of this year, according to Unite, which has published the (very long) list of financial services job cuts in an attempt to highlight the plight of the industry. "The financial... Read more

AIB staff have the government to thank for the fact that the bank has yet to announce any redundancy plans, in spite of posting a €872m for the first half of 2009. However, headcount is down since the beginning of this year, bonuses have evaporated and hiring is still non-existent. The results were predictably bleak – a €872m loss for the first six months of 2009, compared to a €1.04bn profit... Read more

Anglo Irish's decision to award 70 staff 'modest' pay rises is not only out of kilter with continued poor results at the bank, but is also unreflective of salary trends in the country's financial sector generally. The move to award salary increases to 40 staff in Ireland, 20 in the UK and 10 employees in its US operations has not gone down well at all. Needless to say, after nationalisation,... Read more

Ireland's financial sector has received a much-needed boost by the entrant of a new range of investment funds worth €90bn, which is likely to create a large number of jobs. However, one industry body suggest competition could get a lot stiffer for the industry. Source UK, a joint venture between Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, has unveiled plans to domicile a new range of funds in Ireland.... Read more

If you’re applying for multiple jobs, and doing so online, you may reach a point at which you start to question the value of writing yet another cover letter describing why you’re suited to yet another role that you’re applying for speculatively and may get absolutely nowhere with. Don’t go there. Although covering letters are time consuming, repetitive, can state the obvious, and may never be read, they’re probably still worth it. “CVs... Read more

It's no secret that US banks have been undergoing stress tests to see if they might need to raise extra capital. But analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods have devised a similar method to assess the state of European banks. And guess what? Ireland's big two are among the handful theoretically needing extra cash. Just six banks fall below the 4% equity tier 1 ratio, meaning they'll require a minimum of... Read more

AIB's new managing director Colm Doherty has admitted something to staff that ongoing chief executive Eugene Sheehy did not – job cuts may be necessary. Despite the bank's iron grip on costs, which has included cancelling the Christmas party and cutting down on stationery, it has yet to unveil any redundancy plans. In the immediate aftermath of state bailouts, it was considered too politically sensitive for both AIB and Bank of... Read more

Bank of Scotland (Ireland) is set to cut 750 jobs after closing its retail network to focus on corporate and commercial lending activities. The cuts are severe, and are already causing a lot of consternation within Ireland's financial services sector, but cannot come as a complete surprise considering the ongoing restructuring within its parent company Lloyds Banking Group. All 44 BoSI branches, which operate under the Halifax brand, will be closed... Read more

A growing number of international workers are being absorbed by the Irish financial services industry, and in particular by the rapidly expanding funds sector. “There’s been a huge influx of Polish people in the Irish market this year,” says Darren McCabe, recruitment consultant with Joslin Rowe. This influx has eased the candidate shortage in the financial services sector which was particularly acute a year and a half ago, Darren says. The educational... Read more

Irish financial firms are still scrambling for a limited pool of compliance staff, and salaries have surged over the last year. Thanks to the Re-Insurance Directive – fully implemented on 10 December 2007 – and to Ireland’s heavily regulated financial markets, demand for compliance staff soared last year as investment banks, fund administrators, global custodians and insurance firms all beefed up their teams. What’s more, salaries for senior level staff leapt... Read more