how to find a job in China's financial sector

I got an email from one of my readers. He(or She) asked me to advise the job hunting in China's financial market. I am trying my best to answer it here. Hope it will help that reader, as well as many others. But what I would like to say that it is more important for me to tell more details which sector in the financial field you guys want to work in.

- the job market, number of job opportunities available

The job market is pretty good this year. Many of banking getting listed are recruiting more people, especially from overseas. one example is ICBC is recruiting now, even including fresh graduates, which is not that usual. Securities firms and insurers are also have a good time, too.

- the skills generally required (language, technical, quantitative)

Languages are basically English and Mandarin. You must have some finance degree or better some working experiences from overseas, which will help a lot.

- Credentials, education (masters, CFA, MBA, the school name)
All of them will help, but depending on what types of firms you want to join. MBA will be the best to join the investment banks and consulting firms, while others will help you with other financial companies or industrial companies which need financial person.

- what is the usual career path (starting positions, promotions, exit opportunities, the easiness of transitions into other industry)

Starting positions is depending how many experience you have. It is hard to tell in general. But I believe in a new sector, it will be easier to get promoted. As I know many investment bankers are pretty young, beyong their 40s.

- the pay scale (compared with other industries, benefits, tax)

Paid normall better than others, if not the best. Commercial banks paid pretty good among all types of careers before, and now investment bankers and consultant are catching up. But commercial banks usually have off-the-record income, such as house compensation, while the others may not have that.

- What are some of the bigger industries within Finance and what are the developing ones (Asset management, risk management, consulting, Investment Banking, Hedge funds, private equity, etc) ?

Bigger industries are commercial banks and brokerages. Hedge funds and private equities are growing, but still small. Fund managerment companies is also big, while expats could easily find a lot of sino-foreign joint ventures. Consulting, to tell the truth, is not as popular as before. Risk management is a pretty new area, but I believe it will develop quickly.

- Which cities are good for this industry (Shanghai, hongkong, guangzhou)?

hoho, this also depends on various sector, but to tell the truth, Guangzhou is not comparative with SH and HK. Hong Kong is still the international financial center, which is more efficient and regulated. Good place for investment bankers, at least based there to enjoy the low tax benefit. SH is better for sino-foreign joint venture career development, such as funds and importing/exporting related. BJ is a place for financial experts working closely with policies, such as commercial banks, investment banks, and even brokerages. Private equity and venture capital are usually based in BJ too. Also, SZ is also a good place for small and medium size companies, the city also has a lot of loca private equities and hedge funds.

All in all, it depends on various choices, and my understanding is just for reference. just meeting a banking expert last week, and he told me attitude is more important than others for financial professionals overseas to work in China. And that's true.

India and China

I was attending the Business CEO Forum in BJ on Wednesday. One of the session is on India and China's competitiveness. Why people always like to compare country from country? Especially like the emerging China, people first compared it to China, then India, then maybe some time U.S. But I would like to argue China is always China, with its unique history and opportunity and weakness. China has its own fantasy.

Among the Q&A session with a governor from Saudi Arabia, a guy from China Beijing Secondary Exchange, a government-owned secondary market for company sales, stood up and invited governor for a visit. It sounded no problem if he could stop then. But he continued to complain a lot on the foreign investors' bad opinion on China and....( I almost forgot his point in fact). The moderator had to stop him in a really rude way. I could say he is really brave but the timing was not proper, and the manner was not polite. One senstence, not a good show-off time.

Many Chinese businessmen are agressive these days, especially when dealing with foreign people, but in fact, they haven't learnt the well-rounded way to show themselves. I still remember when I meet the guy, a senior official with that exchange, in a conference where he gave an exciting speech. But during the conference break, I tried to talk to him, but he behaved in a really strange way: he raised his two hands near his mouth, without speaking anything, only his lips moving around, trying to show me he couldn't speak; doesn't make sense at all, right? if you don't want to talk to the media, then just tell them directly. why behave so strangely?

I always remember this, and I believe it shows they need a lot of professional training on how to do a good show off.

Difference between ICBC's A share and H share

ICBC, finally, got listed, after a month's hard work of my colleagues and me. The first trading day, interesting things happened, A share in Shanghai increased by 5 percent, while H share in Hong Kong rose by 15 percent. (A share and H share were priced same) People asked why, and I asked too to SH fund managers. They have different answers, and I quoted them as well. But I got one simple answer for myself(not for newpaper, nor for anyone else) is like this:

Compare the average consumer price in SH and HK, SH is lower than HK of course. Then how come could the stock to have the same price between SH and HK?

So the trading different is natural to me. Then I got the question: so what will be the relations between stock market and consumer price? Will the stock market in HK with many mainland stocks same with SH lead the SH consumer price finally? or SH stock price will tend to be lower than HK for the same company?

terrible BJ transportation

Hong Kong could always be a financial center, just because of its efficiency: this is what I think most when my taxi met with traffic jam during the past days in BJ. For my working 12 hours in a day, almost a third was on the way, or on the way to get a taxi. So many transporation lights, so many traffic jam in every minute(even in the noon of Friday). I am kinda of used to it as I learnt that it will not become better even I become angry.

So HK, the city with no jam, will always be the place for the efficient work. In one second, you could reach everywhere without waiting in a taxi.

BJ is still good for politics, SH is catching up with BJ in terms of traffic jam(see how long it takes to go from Pudong to Puxi during the busy hour), while HK, smaller, is the most efficient. That's the advantage no one could catch up in five years, or maybe ten years.

Wikipedia's ban got lifted

After I just complained on the wiki connection, I found the story from my professor Andrew Lih's blog on a comprehensive research of wiki's connection in every province in China. In fact, the ban on the wiki's english website was already lifted. Congratulations. China has another channel to communicate with the world la.

Speaking of wikipedia, it grows so fast. Every time I search something via google, link to wikipedia will always appear among the top five, which is quite impressive.

I always want to write some tips on how to make use of different search engine. With a computer background, I always use three search engines:

Google: good for direct search in english and Chinese for the specific websites. always good for search in english

Baidu: good for search the most popular info in Chinese. you will always know which article people read most. but bad for searching the right websites.

www.iask.com: created by Sina.com. it is kind of hidden behind the big name Sina, but I suggest sina.com seperate it as single searching business. This website is so good at searching on news archives, especially good for journalists and PRs. you could find all news for certain topic in the time sequence from the website which is backed up by the fantastic news database of Sina.com. really a waste when Sina.com doesn't promote it much.

what happened to Wikipedia accessed in China?

In one second, it worked suddenly for wikipedia's english website after I accessed to it from google searching link; then, suddenly, in one minute, everything stopped working.

I am using the internet connection in Beijing right now. Such a strange behaviour.

Chinese voice in the blog world

The 2006 Chinese blogger world will be held on Oct 28 to Oct 29 in Hangzhou soon. I believe the conference this year will attract more people from last year dut to the fast growth of the number of Chinese bloggers. Company employees and students are the most active groups in the blog world, while the joining of celebrities, such as their blog in Sina.com, also added more exposure to the blog. I hope it will become a successful conference in which attendees will get what they want. For examples, I overheard that some venture capitalists will attend to look for their investment target....


P.S. Hiking picture last weekend. The Peak in Hong Kong is always fun, no matter when you go and who you go with.

Wealthy Chinese feel no safety

I talked with an assistant of a rich Chinese businessmen on Thursday. He told me his boss is going to finalize his business in Hong Kong at last as the city is more safe. I keep wondering what the businessman is afraid of right now?

Two guess: first, his money is illegal, but from what I know, his business is pretty legal without involving many politics and state-asset stuff. Second, he may be concerned on the safety of his millions of yuan asset, which may be under danger when the whole society lost balance. Seems the second answer is more close to the right answer.

President Hu Jintao has talked for several times on the social harmony. It is a right direction, but needs more solution. This is a target, but behind the social harmony, we should see people's scare. A shanghai financial controller of a state-owned group told me that there is so many bubble in the economy right now, and he wonders how the country will go in the future. His worry does reflect the concern of a lot of people, especially among wealthy class. They have seen their peers fall down and lose their wealth, even their lives, in one night; they also have also sensed the jealous group which hadn't made as much money as them. When Deng Xiaoping allowed a group of people to become richer, he may, or may not, predict that the conflict between the group and the others will be harder and harder.

Under those conflict, China is kind of wandering between the two groups: it could try to stand at the side of the still-poor people, or it could try to protect the already-rich people. It is a hard decision-making process, while no answer has been given out yet. That's why wealthy people ended up in the huge worries.

Glenn Hubbard, a senior economist working with U.S. Federal Reserve and the Dean of the Columbia Business School, said in a recent speech that China's fast growth is highly boosted by the enterpreneurship, rather than from the companding heights. I agreed partly: I agree the commading heights are not well structured to give all transparent policy, but some of them did try to protect the enterpreneurship. Hope more and more officials will be aware of this in the future.

Youtube is fun

It's my first time to try the Youtube.com, which was just bought by Google in the stock valued at US$1.65 billion. The website is really funny. Plus, the speed is really good. I always believe a good video website should have fast downloanding speed. The most annoything is to wait the downloading for ten minutes.

Compared with Google with a market value of over US&130 billion, the deal is not that big. Google used this opportunities to add a strong subsidiary, while increase its exposure when every newsppaer makes it the headline. Good marketing strategy.

Does TOM really need Eachnet?

Tom Group is said to be in the preliminary talk with Eachnet, the 100 percent owned online auction website owned by Ebay. Though both side declined to comment official, Tom's website already has a link of "Auction", marked in the red color, which forwards visitors to Eachnet. They may have the off-the-table relations for a while, I have no doubt.

As one of the biggest media group in China, Tom group, with the biggest shareholder of Li Ka-shing family, already covered several fast-growing areas in China, including Internet, Outdoor advertisting, Sports, TV and film, and Skype. With its strong capital backup, it is good at M&A to strengthen itself in various sector. For example, it spent US$10 million, half in cash and half in covertible bonds, to get 27 percent to Huayi Brothers, the company making films including the recent-showing The Banquet, and The World without Thieves.

However, it is a question for Tom, already with a online shopping part but without experience on the Eachnet, to help Eachnet to outperform its strong competitor Taobao.com. Last time, I said Eachnet is out of the style because it already among the popularity among sellers. For instance, compared with the laptop sector of the two side, Taobao has over 11000 laptops on sale, over three times than Eachnet with 3600 units. How Tom could beat Taobao, when Ebay couldn't succeed?

I stay concervative on this deal, however, Tom may need a channel of real money, while Eachnet could provide one. Tom's Skype website definitely wants to attract Eachnet's users who already have accounts. The Merge may help consolidate the users, but don't always forget users are also easy to go away after the consolidation.

Good luck, Tom, Ebay and Eachnet. Not sure which investment bank is advising on the deal right now, but please make some good point first.

Warm Springs_a brave president

I am honored to attend the first screening of Warm Springs in Hong Kong this Saturday evening. The producer HBO will show it from October 2. The film tells the story on how Franklin Delano Roosevet, the only U.S. president to serve three terms in U.S. history., win his fight with paralytic illness and finally succeeded. He is brave, optimistic, funny and firm. During the resting period in Warm Springs, the peaceful small town, he learnt his responsbility as well as knew his weakness. A leader would never be perfect, but he will always perfectly know his strength.

The film moved me. Watching together with many people suffering from paralytic illness and the charity gentleman who sponsor the event, I felt the charity event like this is really inspring. Luckily, I am still healthy, but I should be responbile to help those non-lucky people. They are trying their best, and I should try my best to serve them. The world is never perfect, but we should know perfectly what we could do.

Shanghai Media Group_My Shanghai Experience_Part two

Shanghai, as the most fabulous city in the eye of foreigners, should have its own big media group.

Shanghai Media group, set up based on four TV stations inthe city, has about 5200 staff with the asset of 11.7 billion yuan. Big number, isn't it?

As the second-largest biggest media group just following CCTV, the official media group led directly by central government, SMG is trying to expand as a full media corp covering print, radio, Internet, newswires and TV stations. TV is its strongest part right now which contributes all the profit, I guess. They has the newspaper named China Business News, which is also trying to make money though hard. Also do its radio and website. The group also tried to buy a news wires, while unfortunately, no target is available as news wires are so few in China.

Could Shanghai Media Group become really big? the question depends on if Shanghai's strength in media could outperform Beijing. As the international city, Shanghai should try to diversify its media into different fields to meet the needs. For example, Shanghainese, which are always used by Shanghai-origin anchor on the screen, should be banned. People living in Shanghai is from every corner of China and Shanghai should learn the culture of Beijing to accept everything.

Luckily, Shanghai Media Group is trying its best. At least, it has more freedom to expand itself. But how to get rid of the geography restriction is still a question, at least they should change their english website address www.smg.sh.cn/english into something without the "sh".

Taobao is everywhere_My Shanghai Experience_part one

I already came back to Hong Kong. Time flied fast while 22 days just went away in a second.

It's the longest time for me to stay in the mainland China for the past year. I have to admit, things go faster than I thought. China is an amazing country, I would say, in many areas.

Near my place in Shanghai, there is a street where people sell various stuffs along it during the night. For example, pirate DVDs, make-up, and cups. I shopped around for some cheap, really cheap accessories on the street before the day I left. And the experience is really interesting.

"How about the quality of this necklace?" I asked a boy who must be under the age of 20.

"Good, good. It is just transported from Thailand". The boy answered.

"Really? are you sure it is really good?" I asked again, just for fun.

"Yeah, definitely'. He said firmly, then handed out a name card to me with the name for his accessory store, something like "luxury jewlery", and a website address.

"We are a famous store on Taobao.com". The boy answered. "So we will not cheat".

Oh, my god, this is amazing. someone selling stuffs out of the street told me to go to a website to check his stuffs. I wouldn't imagine it before, but now it seems true. He must be not the only person who do it, and I guess there are thousands of thousands of.

That's the amazing thing about Taobao.com, as well as other websites in China. As China is so big, Internet suddenly becomes something businessmen shorten the distance from the customers. I am not a fun of Jack Ma, the founder of Taobao.com, but I would like to say he knows a lot on China's common consumers. I once had a flatmate in Hong Kong who sells her clothes online, and who really likes Taobao.

On the other side, Eachnet.com, the Shanghai-originated website founded by two Harvard Business School graduate, has went out of play these days, at least, told by my former flatmate.

Say, that's the Internet, where Jack Ma, a former English teacher, could beat two HBS graduates. And there will be more amazing things.

How the China's financial futures market going?

I attended the two-day China Futures International Forum last weekend. The conference was a little bit different from the conferences I attended before, where speakers only talk their own ideas without any kind of Q&A and replies. Compared with other conferences where people could only argue, this conference is more like an investor education course, where attendees could only listen to speeches from overseas stock exchanges, investment banks, brokerages, and academics. Just like a baby, China's financial derivatives are learing how to walk, though slowly, walk.

China FX, do people care?

I am attending the two-day conference of the 4th China FX forum held by Euromoney in Shanghai. To my surprise, attendees are not as many as the people I have ever seen for the Euromoney conferences before. Does it mean not many people care, or what?

Here is some update on the coming 2006 Chinese Blogger Conference. As I overheard, they are still short of half of the sponsors. If you by chance know anyone who would like to sponsor it, please contact the organizer. If your company wants more exposure, please try to register it, too. As I overheard again, the attendees of starting companies in 2005 conference have all got funding till now. So good choice for enterprenuers..... Never too busy to attend a good conference.

the newspaper's struggle 2

BTW, it shows people are still interested to read the print copies, isn't it? It feels different when your photo are carried online compared with carried on a print, black-and-white, and famous newspaper.

the newspaper's struggle

One of my interviewees asked me for ten copies of our paper carrying an article on him. (Of course he promised to pay) My first response is like this: "what, ten copies, I don't even have one for me. " Then I calmed down to understand his feelings that he may love the story so much. So I called around to my colleagues in Hong Kong but seems no one had the clue. Their responses are: "Hi, come on, it is an electronic age, and we could send him the electronic copies".

Hmmm, speaking frankly, it is weird for newspaper to say "electronic age", or at least not in a right position. I know most of the newspaper still make money from selling paper copies as well as the advertisements carring on those copies. Then why it is hard to do print print copies specificly, or seems everyone is reluctant to?

As I wrote months ago, newspapers are struggling between the print copies, the main source of profit, and the online copies, the emerging source of profit but still small. How to balance the production in the two area is a hard question for every CEOs managing newspaper. I even read an article from the print copy of Asian Wall Street Journal which is trying hard to attract readers to its charged websites. It is a breaking story, but in the second paragraph( the paragraph in the journalism is a complimentary part to explain the lead in the first one), it says things like this "WSJ. com is the first to report it yesterday". So what? So people should read stuffs on WSJ.com as the print one doesn't carry breaking news.

It is hard. To be fair, WSJ did a good story on how the website of MTV, the most popular music video television station amoung teenagers, failed to attract the same group of audience. Those youths, aged between 15 to 25, preferred more "cool" place such as myspace.com.

I would say it is the problems among all traditional media. They use the traditional thinking to set up an emerging media, which is wrong. They have the expertise, but it doesn't mean they will succeed in the new world. Getting rid of the old, and sometimes arrogant thinking, they could listen clearly on what the users think.

Speaking all things above, I feel a bit of weird, too, as myself is a newspaperer. Anyway, to be fair again, I found something for the interviewee who asked for ten copies of our paper. We do have a website for reprint, though you need to submit a lot of information such as the reason you reprint it. There is still a solution, though I would think it will be exciting if you could order online and then print as many copies as you want.

A new generation of China officials

Talking about Chinese officials, what will you think? someone very old with a pair of big glasses. No, they are a totally new generation, educated in the west and then coming back to China for government career.

Got the leaflet of a finance forum in Shanghai. Reading the officials' resume, I learnt that they are different. Examples:

Mr. Fang Xinghai, Deputy director of Shanghai Financial Services Office
42, PhD from Stanford University, Previously investment officer and the economist of the World Bank

Mr.Zhang Guangping, Director, business Innovation & Supervision Department, China Banking Regulatory Commission
PhD in Economics from U.S., worked in Standard& Poor, Deputy President for JP Morgan Japan, studied in Harvard Law school on securities and banking regulation

Mr. Qi Bin Director for the research center of China Securities Regulatory Commission
MBA from Chicago Business School, worked in the asset management department of Goldman Sachs, Partners in a New York venture capital fund.

And there should be many other in the same type.......

A new generation of China officials

Talking about Chinese officials, what will you think? someone very old with a pair of big glasses. No, they are a totally new generation, educated in the west and then coming back to China for government career.

Got the leaflet of a finance forum in Shanghai. Reading the officials' resume, I learnt that they are different. Examples:

Mr. Fang Xinghai, Deputy director of Shanghai Financial Services Office
42, PhD from Stanford University, Previously investment officer and the economist of the World Bank

Mr.Zhang Guangping, Director, business Innovation & Supervision Department, China Banking Regulatory Commission
PhD in Economics from U.S., worked in Standard& Poor, Deputy President for JP Morgan Japan, studied in Harvard Law school on securities and banking regulation

Mr. Qi Bin Director for the research center of China Securities Regulatory Commission
MBA from Chicago Business School, worked in the asset management department of Goldman Sachs, Partners in a New York venture capital fund.

And there should be many other in the same type.......

How China could set up a worldwide financial organization

I was in the 3rd China Finance Forum last weekend. Some speakers are really good and open, while some others are talking on rubbish and wasting audience's time. The last speech from Xu Xiaonian, the managing director of Goldman Sachs Gaohua, the U.S. investment bank's joint venture, however, gave something unique for me to think.

His topic is on how China, the world's fastest developing ecnomy, could set up a worldwide financial organization. He compared the financial sector to the manufaturing sector, and expected some successful private financial organizations will come out to serve the world as Lenovo or Huawei, or ZTE in the manufacutring sector. His basic arguement is that China should continue to open its financial sector as well as introducing managements with international views and incentive salary system to set up world-level financial organizations. He also said that the successful financial organizations will finally come from private sector in which profit is everything, instead of state-owned ones, where management cares more on the employment rate and society stability.

I don't usually believe in economists, especially those in-house researchers, as they always speak for their companies. Xu may have a point saying state-owned companies may not become the worldwide successful onew. I have seen many bankers, or traders from state-owned companies are complaining on their salaries as well as their jobs. but I don't believe the private companies could neglect the employment rate and society stability. As one of the corporate ethics, companies should care about the social principles instead of 100 percent caring on revenue.

Also, I think Mr. Xu may miss another point on the creative culture among the sectors. Lenove as well as Huawei both have their own technology, while now the financial sector in China is only learning from outside. During the conference, it is so common to hear people, from banking to futures brokering, all talking about the difference between China and other countries.

"Now, China is *****, different from the other countries with ****, so that's why China will change".

I am not sensitive on the gap. If China has 1 percent people drink milk, while 60 percent of the U.S. people drink milk, I still don't think China will have 60 percent of people drink milk in the future as China will not become U.S. I believe in China's own character, say, environment, geography, habit, and or so.

That's like the financial sector. We may not have another Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, but we may have a Chinese financial service provider doing different business with investment bankers but succeed in the world. Let's see.