| Lost Your Job on Wall Street? Head for Brazil! |  |
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| 27 May 2008 | |
| by John Fitzpatrick The financial crisis which has hit American and European banks has cost tens of thousands of workers their jobs. One side effect of this has been a rise in interest by Western bankers in other markets, particularly in India, the Middle East and the Far East. The Times of London coined the expression summing up the dilemma facing those with no prospects in Western markets: ‘Mumbai, Dubai, Shanghai – or Goodbye”. It quoted a headhunter as saying there had been an annual increase of 20% to 25% in the number of Western bankers heading East over the past two years. So far there has been no sign of many (if any) of these jobseekers heading to Brazil but there are a number of reasons why they should consider the idea. Any Wall Street whiz kid would feel at home immediately in São Paulo. The city is obsessed with money, success, status and flaunting your wealth. Visit the old downtown area around the Bovespa and BM&F futures exchange, Avenida Paulista, Faria Lima, Funchal, Itaim and Berrini or head further out along the Marginal highway almost as far as Interlagos and you´ll see banks, brokerages, finance houses, insurance companies, accountancy firms, consultancies, actuaries and lawyers´ offices by the score. Countless sky-high buildings, gleaming as the sun reflects their glass exteriors, swarm with hundreds of thousands of busy bees, plugged into their computers, phones glued to ears as they gaze into their computer screens while holding conversations with a dozen people at the same time |