This is what's really happened to MD hiring on Wall Street this year
Now that investment banking revenues are "back" and we're in the "early stages" of a multiyear capital markets recovery in the words of Morgan Stanley CFO Sharon Yeshaya, it might be presumed that banks are hiring managing directors (MD) in greater numbers than before.
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Not exactly. MD hiring in 2024 is on track to be higher than last year. But not appreciably so.
Search firm Sheffield Haworth analysed the number of MDs hired by leading banks into investment banking and capital markets teams in the US in the first three quarters of 2024 versus the whole of 2023. It found that while a selection of leading banks hired 136 managing directors in the US in the whole of 2023, a similar selection hired 112 MDs between January and October 2024. Rounded up to 12 months, the implication is that 149 MDs will be hired for the full year. - 13 more.
Allowing for the fact that fewer MDs are typically hired in the fourth quarter, this is not a bad year for MD hiring on Wall Street. Nor is it a good year. It is pretty average.
Sheffield Haworth's data on this year's US managing director hiring suggests 2024 will be comparable to 2019, 2022 and 2023 for senior banker recruitment, while being worse than 2022 and better than 2020.
However, hiring this year is more dispersed than in the recent past. The chart below shows which banks the new MDs have been hired into. JPMorgan aside, the big banks have only conducted tepid MD hiring. 2024's biggest MD hirers have been Wells Fargo and Santander.
Julian Bell, head of the Americas at Sheffield Haworth, says demand for senior bankers is more broadly spread in 2024. "It certainly seems hiring is on our clients’ agendas," says Bell. Whereas recruitment in 2023 was particularly focused on tech, biotech and ECM and concentrated in a few firms, he says hiring this year has a wider focus, both in terms of sectors and banks.
That bodes well for 2025. Hopefully.
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