Deutsche Bank's cuts came at a brutal period for Europe's finance industry - and job seekers have a tough road ahead
- Deutsche Bank kicked off a plan to cut 18,000 jobs yesterday in a massive overhaul of the business.
- Most of these workers will be looking for jobs at the worst possible time due to an ever shrinking market and summer lull in hiring.
- An insider at one bulge-bracket firm, who spoke to Business Insider, said any poaching of top talent from Deutsche Bank had been done long before yesterday's cuts.
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Yesterday, Deutsche Bank started a massive overhaul of it's business, cutting 18,000 jobs globally in the process. It's yet another blow to the shrinking European finance industry.
For Deutsche's workers, it's a worry as now they're chasing jobs in a market where there's an even smaller pool of roles.
Since 2008, hundreds of thousands of jobs have disappeared from global finance and many of the biggest banks have only continued to cut jobs, due to automation and new technology.
Making matters worse: European regulations that kicked in last year have squeezed mid-size and regional banks, forcing them to focus on their core specialties or dump business units altogether, according to Greenwich Associates.
Bloomberg reported that front-office headcount for investment banking in 2018 fell for a fifth year straight, and even the hedge which used to poach Deutsche's workers are being forced to cut back on recruitment.
Bloomberg says traders likely will be able to go to family offices, boutique firms and Goldman Sachs has reportedly been looking outside of it's own walls for more senior roles.
But an insider at one bulge-bracket firm, who spoke to Business Insider, said any poaching of top talent from Deutsche Bank had been done long before yesterday's cuts. Any workers who do manage to get back in the game may have to take a pay cut. According to the company's annual salary report, over 1,100 material risk takers in Deutsche Bank's investment bank earned $1.25 million on average last year.
In Europe, Brexit colliding with the cuts is likely to produce thousands of redundancies in London.
But it may not be all doom and gloom for the German Bank's outgoing workers.
While it's a brutal time to be looking for a job, Joseph Leung, a managing partner at recruitment firm Aubreck Leung, says Deutsche's overhaul might give banks an exception to thaw summer hiring freezes.
"There's a lot of quality coming out of DB right now, and the smart ones will take stock of what they have and see how they can accommodate some of these people," he said in an email to Business Insider.