Investment bankers and hedge fund executives hold “a particularly jaundiced view about employment opportunities” in the UK’s financial services sector, the survey found.
Although 23% of those surveyed said they thought that employment conditions in the UK were “better than those elsewhere”, 39% felt otherwise, and the remaining 31% said they thought conditions in the UK to be the same as those elsewhere.
Close to 10% of the CFA Society of the UK’s 9,000-plus members participated in the survey, which was conducted at the end of 2010, according to a summary of the findings on the CFA UK’s website.
The results, this summary noted, made “dismal, if somewhat unsurprising, reading”.
Bankers, hedgies most sceptical
Most pessimistic about the UK’s employment opportunities were the investment bankers surveyed – of whom 47% said it was less attractive than other financial centres – and hedge fund industry executives, 45% of whom shared the bankers’ downbeat assessment.
“Tellingly, with respect to job functions, the only group to have a markedly more positive view were the risk managers (who made up just 7% of respondents), though analysts (who made up 25% of total respondents), too, were somewhat more positive than the average respondent,” the CFA UK noted.
CFA UK chief executive Will Goodhart noted that increased tax burdens and regulation had contributed to the predictably negative sentiment that appeared in the aftermath of the financial crisis, when redundancies were widespread.
Such tax burdens and regulation, he added, “could potentially threaten” the UK and London’s current, “pre-eminent reputation as a centre for financial services”, and noted that the CFA UK’s research “certainly implies that more investment professionals believe there may be greater opportunities for them overseas.”
Goodhart did not specify which taxes or regulations were believed to be most damaging.
The CFA UK said the full results of its survey will be published in a careers guide it will distribute to its members next month.
The CFA UK is the UK affiliate of the CFA Institute, which administers the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement (CIPM) curriculum and exam programmes worldwide. Globally the CFA Institute has more than 94,000 members.
