Chinese financial institutions will take advantage of the global financial turmoil to attract top financial talent from all over the world rather than buy into beleaguered companies, say experts.

China Investment Corporation (CIC), the country's sovereign wealth fund, has just launched a new recruitment drive for over 30 positions across 11 categories including equity investment, fixed-income investment, alternative investment and macroeconomic research.

According to He Fan, deputy director of the financial research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, it is still not the right time for Chinese financial institutions to buy into their foreign counterparts bogged down in the financial turmoil. "But we will use the opportunity to attract financial talent."

According to Bloomberg, the global financial sector has cut more than 83,000 jobs from last July and more finance executives are expected to lose their jobs as the chaos on Wall Street worsens following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

For Liu Tao, a researcher with Shanghai Institute for International Studies, one of the major bottlenecks of China's financial sector is the lack of talent, not capital.

Take Shanghai, the country's financial hub with a population of 20 million, for example. There are only 200,000 finance professionals in the city. In any developed country, a city like Shanghai would have around 1 million such professionals.

It's not the first time that Chinese enterprises have launched a global recruitment drive. But the result has not been satisfactory so far.

"The major concerns of international professionals in coming to China mainly hinge on the difference of regime and culture of State-owned enterprise and private firms. They are not sure if they can function in a different system," said Ding Haiying, director of Spencer Stuart (China), one of the world's leading executive search consulting firms.

"But this is really a good time for Chinese enterprises to lure top global talent," said Ding, citing as example China International Capital Corp's (CICC) success in attracting international talent on the cheap when the Internet bubble burst in 2000.

(China Daily September 24, 2008)