Things didn't turn out how I expected!

Future is never what you expect

When I resigned from a low-pay high-security job in the banking industry to move into the dealing room of an American investment bank almost two years ago, I wasn't expecting things to turn out so bad so fast: having been made redundant a couple of weeks ago, I look back at the series of choices I made during those two years:
- wrong underlying asset class, bank and team;
- right qualification and function.

The question that I need to address now is whether or not I should try to stay within the investment banking field. Several answers are possible:

Scenario 1: The financial industry's outlook improves from 2010 onwards.

Volumes and activity in structured products eventually pick up after a tough period (2008-2009) for the banks' balance sheets and their employees.
The challenge is then to remain within the industry in a front office position and to learn as much as possible to gain some deal-making skills and/or some technical/trading skills. When bullish markets return, I get rewarded for being patient and get some managerial responsibilities.

Scenario 2: The market for structured products never fully recovers from the 2007-2009 crisis

The financial community realises that structured products are too complex to manage and don't bring much added value to customers. Investment and commercial banks revert to vanilla pay-offs. Technical profiles with engineering degrees or PhDs in maths are shunned in favor of people with business school backgrounds.
The question is then either to exit the market for structured products or to move into a more business-oriented position. Taking up a role in a strategic consulting/audit firm allows me to stay close to the financial sector while broadening my skills and contacts.

A compromise between both scenarios would be to move back to a controlling role within the financial industry so as to keep in touch with the fast-moving environment of investment banks while not bearing the risk of losing my job again because of a poor timing.

Darwin's theory of evolution: are you a prey or a predator?

There are a few facts that still remain valid as we navigate through the current financial crisis:
- demand for financial services, whether it be from an ageing population in OECD states or from booming economies in emerging countries, will remain strong in the next decades;
- the financial industry will undergo several business revolutions in terms of products, services and organizational practises, as well as various crises that will keep reshaping the landscape of financial services firms - today's leaders will not be tomorrow's.
Seen from today, the only challenge is then to shape a career that builds on those drastic changes rather than riding against them.