Environment - Being GS its expected you work hard. PWM is not quite as tough on this as IBD obviously. There was a lot of discontent within PWM when i was there I can tell you. They had a lot and I mean a lot of advisers leave in just about every state. They werent happy with the firm telling them to have to drop their client lists down to only 100 family groups, as they only wanted big clients 2 mil+ i assume. Advisers were pissed, how do you tell a client of 20 years, nope leave i can only have 100 and you arent wealthy enough? Certainly back office, which is pretty much where I was, kind of middle maybe, everyone was trying to get out of there just about. Bunch of young kids, very much shafted into a job taht they thought would be a lot mroe analysis then it was and client contact, but at end of day was a lot of backoffice data entry. A lot of discontent. The IT systems there are old and outdated, I think they were planning a new system, not sure if that was shelved in the wake of the financial crisis or waht. But I can tell you our clients were not hjappy with some of the reports they would receive, just very wrong at times. But having said that, it wasnt all that bad. There certainly was, but very very little opportunity to move about from back office. One guy did manage to move from my department to a trader type role in asset maangement. I forget what you call it, but he balances the portfolio and executes trades etc for the fund. Most moves if any however were to an assistant role for the adviser. Basically being an advisers bitch! I just dont like PWM in general, so Im a bit negative to it. Although i do think there is value in PWm along with a financial adviser who provides tax planning and what not. The other departments I think were pretty sound. Especially IBD, they were really moving up in the world and starting tog et some big project. Although it never went through they did work on BHP and RIO merger, which would have been a massive deal had it been closed
I did hear that they lost heaps of PWM advisers plus a fair few research analysts. I am surprised to hear that their IT systems were outdated though - that is not something you want to screw up Not sure why they don’t focus on IB anyway really (I guess the fat margins in PWM are just too attractive)
yep from mid 2007 i suppose to mid 2008 nearly, they lost the whole gold coast office, half of brisbane, most of adelaide and perth I think. Not sure what happened in sydney. And at head office in melbourne they lost atleast half I think. Some guy who was pretty senior in PWm had enough, left, took his however many months ‘gardening leave’ and then setup his own new firm and took a whole lot of advisers with him. I remember going to one of the offices interstate and clients calling up quite angry that they had not received any communication about their adviser having left. I think depending on how much money you had with them you either got a phone call and if less a letter. i think the big ones probably got to have meetings with some of the big boys, to try and keep them
lets talk more about these dudes!..
sorry maddane, L2 in 30 days, gotta spend less time on AF and more time in front of the books!
yeh, I got it too in 30 adys. I am stuffed!