They may or may not be smarter than Singaporeans. But they are definately cheaper, faster, politically astute and more importantly complain much less than singaporeans.

And they are more numerous. They can feed 3 villages with the salary paid to 1 singaporean

Any lawyer turned IB/PE analysts? Curious to find out if the transition is welcomed by the high finance industry.

Cheaper? For sure.

Faster in terms of what? I have seen lazy and slow cecas too. Whether they pretend to be slow is another matter.

Politically astute... Agree with this. The average sinkie is retarded in managing office relationships.

Complain less. Not sure if this is a good thing. It means you will be willing to kio sai and be undercut.

Thanks for this, this is insightful, seems like high finance is still relatively competitive compared to tech

At early level yes, but if you wait too long it will be tricky situation as they will not hire you into senior position, but you will be dumb to accept entry position in your 30s or so too.

The latest you can try to join is as MBA Associate, have 3 years or so of professional experience under your belt, do an MBA and land an MBA Assoc position in IB.

IB in itself doesn't require much specialized knowledge (just general intelligence) and legal skills are welcomed.

Complain less. Not sure if this is a good thing. It means you will be willing to kio sai and be undercut.

That is the main reason they get the job. ;)

"High finance" comes from the French "haute finance". Finance is a multifarious industry, with many layers servicing the entire economy. "High finance" is most easily contrasted to retail finance, for example retail banking where the bank serves individual customers or businesses, taking deposits and making loans.

Traditionally "haute finance" involved lending money directly to the king or country, and the financial transactions between countries. Finance is much more than just lending money nowadays and has many other large players than just countries too, so the meaning of high finance has also evolved.

You can loosely define high finance today as financial services between large institutions (instead of individuals), and involving large transaction sizes. So within finance, one hears terms like "institutional investor" or "institutional clients". The quintessential institutional client in Singapore's context is GIC or Temasek, but it will also mean hedge funds. Given that these institutions can trade/transact in large sizes and consistently, they will get the best pricing in deals.

Private banking is typically not "high finance". Individual clients are rarely considered as "institutions" unless you are Warren Buffett or a few such individuals. There are also important regulatory and compliance reasons to differentiate between individuals and incorporated institutions. Even most billionaires would need to create a family office to become an "institutional client".

Within banking, I would say that if your client is GIC or UOB Asset Management, rather than Mr. Tan or Garden Restaurant Ltd, then you are operating in "high finance". But frankly, this term is rather ostentatious and rarely used by bankers. We just say "institutional clients".

Not only that, the hiring manager gets a monthly kickback, likely paid quietly in the old country, for choosing to employ him.

hmm))))))))