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We have sent out confirmation emails to those who have requested to attend the networking event. In case you have not received the confirmation, do contact us directly.
Date: Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Time: 6:45pm - 8:30pm
Please register to attend as we have limited space and this is a closed event.
The financial crisis has claimed another high profile life. A serious question beckons, is the pursuit of wealth fulfilling? ?
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=avBKayx4dJe4&refer=home
Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) — German billionaireAdolf Merckle committed suicide by throwing himself under a train, “broken” as his business empire crumbled under a growing burden of debt, his family said.
The 74 year-old businessman was hit yesterday evening near his hometown of Blaubeuren, 44 miles southeast of Stuttgart, a police officer said in an interview. His body was found on the tracks at around 7.30 p.m. about 300 yards from his home and a suicide note had also been found.
Merckle, whose holding company owes banks about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion), owned stakes in HeidelbergCement AG and drug wholesaler Phoenix Pharmahandel AG. He had been seeking emergency financing for more than two months from a group of more than 30 banks led by Commerzbank AG,Deutsche Bank AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.
“The dedicated family businessman was broken by his inability to handle the situation and he ended his own life,” his family said in a statement today. “The distress at his companies caused by the financial crisis and the resultant uncertainty of the last few weeks” contributed to his death, the family added.
We’ve received some positive feedback from the marketplace and our referrers regarding a networking event. As a result, we have decided to take steps towards preparing for this event.
To start, we will be making phone calls to some of you to invite you to the guest list for this event. We are targeting about 150-200 attendees from the banking sector. This is to ensure each of you will get a reasonable amount of time with the recruiters.
If you are interested in reserving a spot for yourself (before we get to you), please e-mail us your CV to admin@vawch.com. We are planning to compile a CV book to distribute to the recruiters who will be attending. This should help to maximize your visibility and coverage amongst the headhunters and increase the likelihood of making your next career step. And for those of you wondering, yes - we may also include up to 2 other friends to the guest list.
Speak to you folks soon.
Note to self: 73.8kg
On another note, we are thinking of organizing pink slips parties in 2009. This is where we bring together professionals from our social networks to meet up with our recruiter friends (headhunters and employers) in a casual social setting (i.e. over some drinks at a nice chic bar / club). Who knows what will happen… Find a job? Make some friends? Find a date?
We would like to do a short survey to see if you or your friends would come to such an event. To get on the guest list, please send us an email at admin@vawch.com with:
Your Name
Previous Position and Company
Your Industry
Your Function
# of Guests
We will then contact you with details once we garner enough interest and finalize stuff. Thanks!
I went full-on today. Fish soup for lunch - and I only worked on half a portion of rice and yong tau foo for dinner without polishing off the noodles.
I also managed to finally run after a whole month. My recent bout with illness left me unable to exercise for some time. The timing was pretty poor though, 2.5km in 15 mins.
https://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/user/profile.do?u=Benety
Did you know that Nokia has this nifty sports tracker? For GPS enabled phones, it uses satellites in the sky to map out where you walked / ran / biked, how far and how fast. It’s really quite cool. Geeky folks like me love stuff like that.
Anyway, I weighed myself in and I’m now 75.2kg. Progress!
More tough news for bankers as the layoff announcements continue. A total of 92,260 job cuts have been announced globally at major investment banks since October. Here are some of the the latest.
- BlackRock Inc. is cutting 500 jobs worldwide.
- Fidelity Investments is cutting nearly 3,000 jobs right after the new year.
- Legg Mason Inc. is axing around 200 jobs.
- Bank of America Corp. said job cuts may grow to 35,000 after its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. BofA already announced it will began laying off employees in their U.S. equity research departments.
- Blackstone Group LP plans to cut 70 jobs as profits from leveraged-buyouts decline.
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is altering its retirement rules as it restructures its work force and could therefore possibly help reduce headcount by more than the 3,000-plus it intends to lay off.
-Bank of New York Mellon Corp. plans to lay off 4% of its work force, or 800 people.
Interestingly enough there is still selective hiring activity in the wealth management space. From what I’m hearing the likes of Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, BNP are still hiring. . . .
The knife just keeps cutting deeper . . .
UBS is reported to cut another 4,500 jobs. Most of which I believe will come from its investment banking business. To my knowledge, its Singapore’s operation has already announced at least two rounds of cuts already (my guess is probably 3 or 4).
Its other European competitor, Credit Suisse also announced redundancies of 5,300 last week. A significant proportion of this again coming from its investment banking division. Its Singapore operations are about 40 strong and will be going through its fourth round of cuts.
It really is shocking how quickly things have turned bad. I am personally of the opinion that the banks, at least for parts of its business, is overreacting.
After the 2001/2 recession and by 2004, Merrill Lynch’s IBD team in Singapore had reduced its headcount to a total of only 6 FTEs (1 MD, 1 Director, 2 Associates and 2 Analysts)! By 2005/6 that number had quickly doubled and then tripled . . .
From a strategic standpoint, I think this downturn is an massive opportunity for firms to leapfrog or give a dehabilitating blow to its competitors. CEOs are paid top dollar to lead companies, it is quite disappointing that many of them aren’t leading their organizations but merely following the “herd instinct” and making deep headcount reductions. I’m not suggesting that capacities at firms shouldn’t be reviewed and appropriately cut, but if only some leaders would cease this opportunity to review their business models and think of something creative.