Foreign exchange dealers in demand

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 52

Foreign exchange dealers in demand

ANN BROCKLEHURST,

of AAP (through NZPA)

Manila Foreign exchange dealers in Asia can choose where they want to work at well paid jobs in spite of the uncertainty on world financial and sharemarkets. Chief dealers and bank treasurers attending the Asia Pacific Foreign Exchange Congress in Manila said they were busier looking for qualified new dealers than with letting people go. “Over all it’s been a fairly good year. I think the market is healthy, still growing,” said Mr Jimmy Tay, the treasury manager at Barclays Bank in Singapore. “Almost every other bank is expanding its treasury operation ... There’s a shortage of dealers with good track records,” he said. Dealers said thay had read reports about destitute Hong Kong stock brokers and out-of-work Wall Street investment bankers, but they were quick to disassociate themselves. The October 19 stockmarket crash, the subsequent fall of the U.S. dollar, and the current volatility of exchange rates had made their jobs more tricky, they said. But their lifestyles have not changed. “Foreign exchange dealers are not the ones who drive the Porsches and eat in expensive restaurants,” said Mr Hans-Peter Schobert, the chief manager of Barclays Bank’s far east foreign exchange centre in Hong Kong. “They’re tied to their desks from seven to seven. They don’t have time to worry about their own investments.”

Mr Schobert said international currency traders in Hong Kong could earn anywhere from $NZ46,000 to $NZ123,000 a year. He estimated it took about one and a half years of on-the-job training before a dealer is ready to look after a minor currency for the bank and three years for a major currency. Once dealers had proven track records they could expect to be wooed by banks in the expanding foreign exchange markets of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Mr Schobert said good traders could use their skills to acquire foreign passports, highly valued documents in Hong Kong, which will lose its status as a British colony and revert to Chinese control in 1997. Mr Peter Thomas, a dealer for Lloyds Bank, in Sydney, said: “A lot of banks are looking for a lot of dealers. That’s part of any growing market.” Mr Mark Glover, a dealer at Indosuez Australia, in Sydney, worked for the same bank in London. "They recruited me from England. If anything, salaries might be lower here because it’s a nicer place to live.” Thomas and Glover estimated that experienced foreign exchange dealers in Australia • could expect to earn about SNZIO7,OOO a year. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has said the city state needed 400 qualified dealers thanks to the growth of foreign exchange and financial instrument trading there. Mr Tay said he was training dealers from a large pool f

of university graduates. “We have the potential of rectifying (the situation) faster than Australia and New Zealand. "I can take them in for a couple of years and then export them to my overseas branches.” The liberalisation of Japan’s foreign exchange trading market has led to a strong demand for experienced dealers in Tokyo which some traders say has overtaken New York as the world’s biggest foreign exchange trading centre after London. “We do feel quite short of experienced staff,” said Mr Kazuo Fujii, of the Bank of Tokyo, and president of the Foreign Exchange Association of Japan. “We are . breeding them inside our plant. The Bank of Tokyo is just like the Harvard Business School.” Mr Fujii said there was a problem with foreign exchange . dealers leaving Japanese banks for the higher paying foreign banks and securities companies operating in the country. He estimated the average dealer would earn about $170,000 a year plus bonuses — about a third more than at a Japanese bank. But in spite of the high salaries and the wide choice of jobs, some veteran currency dealers feel now is not a good time to learn the business. “A few years ago we just dealt on facts,” said the chief dealer at a Hong Kong bank. “Now, nobody is looking at the facts. They just deal on announcements.”