BTW The Business Week

Illustration by Michael Kirkham

By Frederik Balfour in Hong Kong

Go East, Young Geek

As the finance-industry funk continues in the West, IT specialists in London and New York are joining the bankers who are heading to Asia, where many banks have dodged the subprime bullet and are expanding. Growing IT investment at financial firms in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore has spawned demand for everything from $76,000-a-year back-office worker bees to $380,000 chief information officers, according to Hudson Highland Group, a New York-based headhunter. A June 2008 study at Hudson found that 1,000 IT workers have defected to the East in the past 12 months.

Thanks to talent shortages in Asia, salaries are as good as—if not better than—what’s offered in New York, Hudson says. But Asian bank bosses can be pretty demanding, says Ellis Seder, manager of Hudson’s Information Technology and Telecommunications unit in Hong Kong. “Long hours are expected.”

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