Q1 Summary: What's Hot, What's Not

Q1 Summary: What's Hot, What's Not

Overall it was a very productive and busy quarter, though as we know past performance is not an indicator of future returns. It will be interesting to see if this initial momentum continues.

Q1 is traditionally busy due to roles hitting the market that were held over from November/December, further turbo charged with replacement hires for all the resignations that were lined up from those holding offers over the summer break.

Anyway, a really healthy Q1 result and if those activity levels were to be carried forward into Q2/Q3/Q4, we would take that in a heartbeat.  

What's Hot

Diversity hires are an ongoing hot topic. At one stage 1/3 of all our mandates were female only appointments and we are happy to say we delivered on ALL of those, as well as on those mandates where diversity was expressed as “preference” rather than an “only” hire option.

Private Equity over Public PE growth mandates have outstripped other PE hires with several new local and overseas funds coming to market.

Private Credit obviously continues to be very active to the point where some are questioning the viability of all the funds and wondering if we might see that bubble burst at some stage, or at least develop a slow puncture as we have recently seen in the VC landscape.

Energy & Renewables activity is strong and will continue to be net acquirers of talent for years ahead.

Debt Markets are generally robust with some substantial salary uplifts across the competitive areas of leveraged finance, DCM and select coverage roles.

Corporate Development has also been very productive for us here at JMES with a couple of clients, including an iconic Australian conglomerate, making multiple hires in this area.

What’s Not

Corporate Advisory except on a replacement basis - noted 2-3 US Banks in the market currently but we understand these are more backfills for those that have left (generally not to other Advisory roles).

Equity Capital Markets continues to be in the doldrums, though we note that one mid cap broker added to their team in anticipation of some light emerging at the end of a very long tunnel for long suffering ECM bankers.

Infrastructure/Listed Equities/Sell-side Research have all generally been quieter for differing reasons.

Strategy unless part of a broader M&A/Business Development function, not seeing much is this space recently.

And there you have it - our takeaway from Q1 . Happy to talk more on this or anything you wish to cover – please reach out.