ShareThisToronto is becoming a beacon of hope for financial workers set adrift by floundering firms around the world, with resumes pouring in to securities firms from bankers and traders in New York, London and other financial hubs.
The reason?
Canadian securities firms aren't slashing jobs the way bigger rivals around the world are, and are using the opportunity to grab top talent.
The result is that employment is holding up in Toronto's financial towers and in Canada's other main banking outposts in Calgary, Vancouver and Montreal, at least in comparison with the carnage in other countries.
Figures released recently showed that the number of people working in the Canadian securities business fell by 3.5 percent in 2008 from 2007 -- which is a total of about 1,500 workers out of more than 40,000.
Many of the lost jobs came as a result of foreign firms cutting back their operations in Canada.
The cuts, while the largest since the tech wreck, take the number of people working in the business back to 2006 levels, according to the Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC).
It's a sharp contrast with Wall Street, with New York state reporting that securities-industry employment has plunged 8.4 percent, from 213,000 jobs in mid-2007 to 195,000 last November. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is forecasting that things could get much worse, with 46,000 financial workers expected to be out of a job by the middle of 2010.
In Canada, "there is a good deal of optimism relative to the rest of the globe," said Bill Vlaad of Vlaad and Co., a Toronto firm that helps bankers and traders find jobs. "We are getting so many calls inbound from expats -- repatriation of Canadians who are in Dubai, or London or New York."
CIBC World Markets, the securities arm of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, has brought in two senior executives from London in the past year, both former employees of Merrill Lynch and Co. Inc.
One, Harry Culham, is a Canadian who returned home to head CIBC's fixed-income and currencies business. The other, Tim Carrington, is new to Canada, crossing the Atlantic to head the bank's global derivatives business from its Toronto office.
"We've been very fortunate that these people have been freed up and we've been able to grab a bunch of them," said Richard Nesbitt, chief executive officer of CIBC World Markets. "That's good, long term, for Canada."
In general, Canadian firms did not staff up as aggressively during the boom as did firms in New York or London, helping to limit the decline in jobs.
"We're conservative on the upside, but equally conservative on the downside," Vlaad said, noting that when a sector is hot in the United States, securities firms hire aggressively and then "the minute the sector is dead they'll slaughter the entire team."
Still, things aren't all rosy on this side of the border. The 3.5 percent decline in employment is the biggest since a 6 percent drop after the tech-stock crash, according to Jack Rando, director of capital markets at IIAC.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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