eFinancialCareers

• Company

  Walker Hamill

• Location

  UK-London

• Compensation

  £35,000 - £50,000

• Position Type

  Employee

• Employment type

  Full time

• Updated

  05 Dec 2008

• eFC Ref no

  477122

Our Client is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net-worth individuals.

The Finance department covers Product and Financial control. Both Product and Financial Control are jointly responsible for the integrity of the financial records. Exotics Fixed Income Middle Office is one of the functions within Product control. The function sits between Front Office and the other support areas and has an emphasis on Front Office support, analysis of P&L and Risk and the Control Environment. Consequently, the function is a main point of contact for many issues that affect the bank. This requires a close working relationship with the Front Office and other support areas within the bank.

Main Function
The FI Exotics Middle Office was created in early 2005 with the primary goal of working with Front Office to facilitate business growth while incorporating rigorous controls. Main Duties The Middle Office team are responsible for supporting the Front Office in the business of dealing Exotic Interest Rate Derivatives. In practice this will mean being responsible for ensuring trades are booked accurately and generate the correct Risk and P&L given the risk profile and structure of the trade.

Specific Tasks:

• Daily production of trading positions to Front Office. Provide detailed and value added analysis of any large or unexpected moves in the risk position.
• Production of risk based P&L Explain for the Front Office. Responsible for the investigation and resolution of any unexplained P&L
• Trade Life Cycle Management. The Middle Office are responsible for ensuring all market observations, barrier events, option decisions and cashflows are correctly represented on the trade bookings.
• Reviewing all trades to Termsheets on T+1 and performing a full review to the Legal Confirmation as soon as it is available.
• EOD reporting to Front Office. Specifically providing a New Trades and Activity Reports, as well as position predicts based off parallel scenarios.
• Establishing a strong Control Environment around the capture of Exotic Transactions such as Approximate Loads Policy, Model Migration and Off-Line Transactions.
• Process Improvements. Middle Office is constantly seeking to innovate and rationalise existing processes. All team members are expected to contribute to this process.
• Trade-event ‘Scenario Analysis’: Exotics Traders spend a lot of time reviewing past deals to see where risk/P&L events have happened. A large part of the job will involve producing reports that help traders to analyse the portfolio and specific trades within it.
• End of day market data environment generation and validation.
• Testing and implementation of system upgrades and process improvements.

Skills:

Previous relevant experience within Exotics Middle Office
Extensive P&L exposure

Experience:

The candidate will be expected to understand the business from a non-accountancy point of view
Good knowledge and understanding of financial markets
Experience of working against tight short-term deadlines in a dynamic, pressurised environment

Business Skills:
High attention to detail
Analytical problem solver
Ability to manipulate financial information for analysis
Ability to meet regular, tight daily deadlines
Strong numeric skills
Ability to review problems from different view points, devising and implementing practical solutions
An understanding of the control environment
Understanding of trade payoffs and risk profiles for vanilla IR derivatives IT

Skills:
Excellent Excel skills
Basic VBA knowledge

Interpersonal Skills:
Excellent communicator at all levels
Robust and able to deal with demanding clients
Excellent interpersonal skills
Strong influencing skills
Diligent and enthusiastic
Strong team player