INTERNATIONAL CAREERS : A World of Opportunity : Growing Asian Economies a Boon for U.S. Finance Workers Abroad : While Wall Street jobs remain scarce, brokerages expand their operations in the rapidly expanding region.
Daniel Kim was laid off along with 50 of his co-workers at PaineWebber in New York last year. He was among the thousands of Wall Street workers tossed out with few prospects because of widespread downsizing by brokerages.
Kim, a 30-year-old bond trader, had trouble getting interviews in New York. So he packed his bags for a hunting trip to a city certain to have more jobs--Hong Kong.
By the time he returned from his five-day trip, he had three job offers.
“It was extremely easy. The market’s booming,” said Kim, who will soon be joining Bear Stearns in Hong Kong.
While Wall Street jobs remain scarce, brokerages are expanding their Asian operations, opening up opportunities for Americans willing to go abroad.
“We’ve seen a real increase in finance jobs abroad in the past two years, specifically in southeast Asia,” said Tom Kozicki, director of the MBA Career Resource Center at USC. No figures were available.
Asian economies continue to grow at double-digit rates. Taiwan’s gross domestic product grew by 11.8% last year, Korea’s by 13.6% and Hong Kong’s by 15.3%.
As companies in the hot-growth countries expand, so does their need to move beyond equity financing and bank loans to more complex financing. U.S., Japanese and European firms are rushing in to fill that need, and many are hiring.
When Henry Kwon, 31, was finishing up his MBA in finance at USC last year, he got no offers from U.S. brokerages. Rather than settling for a back-office job with a manufacturing company, Kwon looked overseas and was able to get a position with Citibank’s corporate finance group in Seoul.
“I wasn’t able to get anything in the area I was interested in in the U.S., but it seemed like everyone was hiring in Asia,” Kwon said.
In South Korea, Kwon helps Korean companies predict how their bonds will be rated by major rating agencies before they are issued. He visits plants as well as corporate headquarters, interviewing everyone from top-level managers at some of the largest conglomerates to factory workers and labor union officials, in order get an idea of a company’s soundness.
“It’s great experience. I don’t know of any other first-year associate in the U.S. who has that kind of exposure,” Kwon said.
However, Kwon and other Americans abroad caution those who plan to return to the United States to carefully consider how work overseas might affect their career paths. Though living in another country can be personally rewarding and eye-opening, overseas experience won’t necessarily give you a leg up in the U.S. job market.
“If you’re in a back office in Seoul doing cash management, it’s not any different from what you’d be doing in the U.S., and you could still be just another face in the crowd when you get back,” Kwon said.
Life in Asia is also expensive. Modest apartments in Hong Kong can rent for $5,000 a month, and a restaurant meal for two in Taipei can easily top $100.
Kwon’s $75,000 annual salary includes a two-bedroom apartment, which helps to offset the high cost of living. But hours can also be longer. Saturday--at least the morning--is an Asian workday, though some U.S. firms split the difference, allowing employees to take alternate Saturdays off.
Though not always required by firms that are hiring in Asia, speaking an Asian language is often a plus.
With little background in finance, Bruce W. Han, 31, went to South Korea on a tourist visa. A Korean American who speaks Korean fluently, Han landed an equity sales job with a Korean conglomerate that was willing to train him because they valued his bicultural background.
That training enabled him to get jobs as a bond salesman in Hong Kong, first with Bear Stearns and now with Union Bank of Switzerland.
“More than likely I would have needed an MBA” to get a comparable job in the United States, said Han, who has a master’s degree in Asian history from Columbia University.
Kwon said his fluency in Korean was helpful but not decisive in helping him land his job with Citibank. On the job, Kwon seldom needs to speak Korean, since executives at large Korean firms often have graduate degrees from American universities and speak English, he said.
“My English ability has been what’s come in handy, especially when we need to draw up summaries and paperwork quickly to send to New York,” Kwon said.
Kwon, who grew up in Los Angeles, said that although he went to South Korea partly to experience another culture, misses the cross-cultural life he had here. “I miss going to Chinatown or getting Thai food, going to Irish pubs. I can’t do that in Korea.”
