By Yoon Ja-young
Staff Reporter
Investment banking (IB) is all about how many high-caliber experts a bank has. They don't mind spending millions of dollars in salaries to investment bankers who accomplish billion dollar contracts.
The Korea Development Bank (KDB), unarguably one of the most preferred dream job locations for talented, smart, and ambitious young people in the country, boasts of such highly qualified human resources.
The bank is focusing on bolstering its IB workforce by actively hiring professionals from outside. Last year, it recruited 30 professionals and experts, including financial engineers, and specialists in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity funds (PEF) and risk management, on top of lawyers and consultants. Specialists like these make up around 3.6 percent of the total workforce. At the Quant Team in the trading center, which has a total seven people, three hold PhDs in financial engineering, while four have master's degrees.
KDB sees no borderlines with regard to recruitment ― it is increasingly hiring foreign national. The bank recruited three Chinese, one Vietnamese, and one Uzbekistani in March, all of them either having a master's degree or a PhD from local graduate schools.
It is especially focusing on employing talented foreigners in emerging economies such as China and Southeast Asia, to expand the IB business there by bolstering research and networks. The bank is also welcoming foreign experts with IB experience in financial firms in developed countries, who will be in charge of project financing (PF), PEF investment, M&A, and credit lending abroad.
``We plan to continue the open, year-round recruitment of experts in various sectors. We are trying to be different from other state banks that often were blamed for their elitist manner and exclusiveness,'' a KDB spokesperson said.
The bank also overhauled employment, evaluation and compensation systems, to focus on performance rather than on seniority.
It is operating a career development program, giving staff members training opportunities to learn about financial market practices in developed countries. The Global IB Academy at Seoul National University or KAIST Graduate School of Finance are examples.
Also, KDB staff members are actively engaged in group studies that are systematically supported by the bank. The bank tries to set up linkage between these groups and outside experts. It hopes to nurture some of them into specialists in its strategic areas, including emerging economies such as Russia. Some 165 members belong to study groups learning twelve languages including Russian and Vietnamese, and researching financial market conditions in those countries.