Bladewatch.com

Computer Weekly

IT workers from investment banks will start to move into the retail financial services sector as job opportunities disappear in the investment sector.

The investment banking sector has been hard hit by the credit crunch with banks such as Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in September, laying off thousands. Lehmans’ bankruptcy, after 158 years in operation, was a key event in the current financial services turmoil. The folding of the company put thousands of highly skilled IT workers into the jobs market.

James Martin, former COO at Lehmans in the UK, says former investment bank IT workers will move into retail banking as high street banks, insurers and the like take advantage of their skills and experience.

“The IT people from the investment banks will start to migrate to retail financial services and they will become a very powerful force within it,” says Martin.

There have been significant changes in the city, both in terms of organizational ownership, in head count and budgets. Organizations have merged or been bought out by other organizations, departments are looking to reduce costs or head count (the number of employees/contractors). With this brings a challenge for those looking for work in that sector, but at the same time opportunities for sectors and businesses that are looking for people.

There remain opportunities in the city, either directly (please consolidate my data center/reduce my support costs), or in other sectors, (please make my passport control system work).  What matters to IT is placing a focus on delivery, being more efficient with what we have, doing what we can to reduce unncessary support overheads or cost. It’s often the little things that can make a difference, changing the page file on the servers, running a defrag that can be the difference between an alert, (system low on memory) or a failure – server backup failed – please investigate.

An interesting and thought provoking article, do check it out.

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