Economic dark clouds bring opportunity for finance brains

Updated on: Wednesday, December 07, 2011

The talk of a double-dip depression may have created a fear of another increment-less year and even possible salary cuts among employees in general, but finance professionals can continue to be bullish. In fact, predicted bad times may have already brought good tidings for economic brains.

Most companies have started scouting for young managers who can help them tide over the impending crisis, professionals who can set their balance sheets right and prevent frauds.

The trend was all so evident in summer internship offers made to students of top institutions such as IITs. About 17% of management students of IIT-Madras were chosen by firms that deal with financial markets and tax and investment banking.

Among top names ready to train IITians were Anand Rathi, D.E. Shaw Group, NCDEX, Sunda-ram Finance and Religare.

Risk managers, specialised financial analysts, treasurers, investment bankers and market relation managers have gained significance in the past few years.

With more Indian companies going global and listing on global exchanges, there was a greater demand for finance professionals to carry out super-specialised operations, said E. Balaji, CEO of consulting firm MaFoi Randstad.

“Companies want to understand the business of risk and hence jobs that were unheard of till a few years ago are now popular,” he said.

In a recent employment outlook survey, Ma-Foi Randstad had projected an addition of 11,900 jobs in the fourth quarter, a growth rate of 1.27%. About 14,800 jobs were added in the third quarter of the current fiscal.

Enthused by the trend, even professionals from other streams are going for short-term finance courses.

Dr D.K. Srivatsava, director of Madras School of Economics (MSE), confirmed a good number of engineering students wanted to specialise in finance as corporates were demanding these skills.

“An increasing number of students is showing interest in specialised courses as these fetch a pay of Rs8-12 lakh at the entry level and ensure placement of about 80% of students,” he said.
This has spurred the school to line up a series of specialised financial courses.

Economic dark clouds bring opportunity for finance brains

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