One year after the Shanghai Stock Exchange reached its highest level of growth and value, large numbers of operators in the Chinese stock exchange are finding themselves out of work as the financial crisis continues to erode world markets.
A veteran trader called Zeng Hui (alias), who works for an investment firm in Nanjing, has been distressed at seeing the situation in the financial world. With ongoing layoffs in investment banks, a lack of liquidity in the marketplace and the bankruptcy of many exchange brokers, he worries bad luck may soon fall upon him.
In his firm, a sales director, three regional managers and many other of his fellow operators were forced to take a break and ninety percent of employees were forced to quit their jobs, according to the report by a Hong Kong newspaper, Wenhui Pao.
“No matter how much experience you have, no matter how many big customers you have, or even if you are managing 100 million-yuan accounts, once you are told to quit, you have to go, ” Zeng said.
“Some operators couldn’t make profits and then left by themselves. Some young operators like us, are “gold medallist” operator, but we are still worried we may lose our rice bowl in no time.”
“If you go to the labor market, you may find many people who just got laid off and are looking for jobs. Right now, layoffs are happening everywhere, who wants to hire?”
The Wenhui Pao report said that though Zeng Hui’s firm has not announced any direct headcount reductions, it now has stricter requirements for its stock operators.
However, in Nanjing and Shenzhen stock firms have cut more than half their workforce. The China International Finance Corp. is also expected to cut 1/6 of its employees, starting from employees in its investment division.
Even those like Zeng Hui and his colleagues who are able to keep their jobs have trouble making money as they did before. “My monthly salary now is only 3000-4000 yuan. Last year, it was 7000 yuan easily. Ordinarily, my monthly salary was above 10,000. Plus, we had our biggest income from bonus money. But this year, I doubt it will come,” said Liu Hong, an analyst in Zeng Hui’s office.
The Wenhui Pao report said another well-known exchange corporation, Zhongxin, is planning to cut its employees’ salaries by a maximum of 20 percent. This is in addition to an earlier reduction in its salaries from 4.8 billion yuan to 4.5 billion in the first half of this year, according to its operation report.
The leading exchange firm, Haitong, cut its salary expenses by 52 percent. It was reported as the largest such cut ever at the Hongyuan Exchange, with implemented a 95 percent salary reduction.
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