Coronavirus outbreak delays job offers in Asia's biggest financial hubs

Recruiting has become less of a priority as firms including DBS Group Holdings Ltd. have highlighted the revenue impact of worsening business conditions.

Financial firms operating in Singapore and Hong Kong are delaying hiring as the coronavirus outbreak disrupts their businesses.

Both domestic and foreign institutions have slowed recruitment, according to headhunters in the financial hubs. They’ve been impacted by quarantines, restrictions on travel to and from China, remote working arrangements and decisions not to conduct face-to-face interviews.

It’s another aspect of the fallout from the virus, which has also caused factory closures, disrupted supply chains and initiated the world’s largest work-from-home experiment. Recruiting has become less of a priority as firms including DBS Group Holdings Ltd. have highlighted the revenue impact of worsening business conditions.

“Everybody is distracted,” said Gurj Sandhu, a managing director at Morgan McKinley Group Ltd. in Singapore. Hiring is falling down the “pecking order,” he said, while adding that nobody is canceling roles yet.

Bloomberg spoke with six recruitment firms, all of which confirmed the slowdown. Hiring processes and relocation plans are taking longer at most companies because of logistical difficulties. While some financial firms are conducting interviews by video conference or phone, closing the deal is more problematic, especially at investment banks and wealth-management units.

Bankers are “big-ticket items,” said Hubert Tam, a managing partner at Sirius Partners Ltd. in Hong Kong. Private banks and investment banks are holding off on hiring until they can meet candidates in person, “even if they performed well last year,” he said.

What’s more, many private bankers covering China would have to travel to the country to meet clients and “get their blessings” before they move banks, according to Amod Jain, a Morgan McKinley consultant in Singapore. “Not everything can be done by phone.”

Asia's mega rich take a hit with $137 billion in combined losses in 2018

India's 23 richest people, meanwhile, saw $21 billion vanish.The world’s fastest growing source of mega-wealth hit a speed bump this year.

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The 128 people in Asia with enough money to crack the 500-member Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost a combined $137 billion in 2018, the first time wealth in the region has dropped since the ranking started in 2012.

Global trade tensions and concerns that stock valuations are too frothy hammered some of the area’s biggest fortunes. China’s tech sector was hit particularly hard, while India and South Korea weren’t spared. The declines occurred even as banks and money managers aggressively stepped up efforts to cater to Asia’s richest.

“Difficult stock market conditions this year and the uncertainty of the trade tensions likely have been a challenge to many businesses,” said Philip Wyatt, a Hong Kong-based economist for UBS Group AG, who doesn’t see the downdraft continuing through 2019 or significantly reducing the ranks of billionaires. Conditions are actually ripe for the region to create more of the mega rich as new technologies attract private capital and government support, he said.

For now, though, fear in the market is trampling fortunes. More than two-thirds of the 40 Chinese on the Bloomberg ranking saw their wealth dwindle. Wanda Group’s Wang Jianlin, whose property conglomerate is selling assets to cut debt, lost $10.8 billion, the most of anyone in Asia. JD.com founder Richard Liu, who was arrested in the U.S. in August for less than 24 hours on suspicion of rape before being released, took the heaviest losses in percentage terms, with his wealth cut almost in half to $4.8 billion. No charges have been filed against Liu, who has denied the allegation.

India’s 23 richest people, meanwhile, saw $21 billion vanish. Lakshmi Mittal, who controls the world’s largest steelmaker, led the way, losing $5.6 billion, or 29 percent of his net worth, followed by Dilip Shanghvi, the founder of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, the world’s fourth-largest generic drugmaker, whose wealth declined $4.6 billion.
South Korea’s tycoons didn’t escape the carnage either. The market rout lopped $17.2 billion from the fortunes of the country’s seven richest people. The father and son who control Samsung Electronics, Lee Kun-Hee and son Jay Y Lee, account for more than a third of that decline.

In Hong Kong, titans of real estate took a big hit. Li Ka-shing, who retired as chairman of CK Hutchison and CK Asset in March, lost $6 billion in 2018, while Lee Shau Kee, the city’s second-richest person, ends the year about $3.3 billion poorer.
There were still plenty of winners to emerge from the wreckage of 2018.
Lei Jun, the chairman of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp., added $8.7 billion, with a July initial public offering catapulting him into the Top 100 of the Bloomberg index after he started the year outside the ranking. The IPO also turned three of his co-founders into billionaires.

Business Standard