Mehrotra lost his high-paying job. He’s now busy calling Indian investment banks for openings and is even ready to take a pay cut to land a job.
MUMBAI: Till last weekend, Rishi Mehrotra (name changed) was his neighbours’ envy. He enjoyed a high profile job with Lehman Brothers — United States’ fourth largest investment bank until Monday — at its Canary Wharf office in London.
Lehman filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 on Monday and Mehrotra lost his high-paying job. He’s now busy calling Indian investment banks for openings and is even ready to take a pay cut to land a job.
Mehrotra isn’t the only one. A number of Lehman Brothers employees, posted abroad and in India, are busy sprucing up their résumés. They’re posting their CVs online on job portals and networking to learn about opportunities in other companies and even countries. One of these companies is India Advisory Partners, an investment banking firm with offices in Mumbai and London.
The mood in Lehman’s office in Ceejay House, one of Mumbai’s costliest commercial office spaces, is sombre. Some of the investment bankers have already been handed pink slips and others are waiting to get theirs. Things are the same in Lehman’s back office at Hiranandani Gardens in Powai. There, employees have been asked to wait for 72 hours before a decision from the headquarters is communicated. But most have already made up their minds.
An employee who joined Lehman last year said, “Though the management has asked for time, I have already uploaded my CV on online job portals. Most of us qualify for firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte. I think I will land a job soon. We are not waiting for the ship to sink.”
Some of those who were slow to react have decided to test the waters in cities other than Mumbai. “I know that the market in Mumbai is flooded with the CVs of Lehman employees. So I am looking for openings in Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Kolkata,” said the employee.
Disappointment and stress is tinged with anger in some cases. An investment banker working with the 158-year-old company couldn’t control his anger. “It’s easy for Lehman to hand us termination letters. Today, had I been working at SBI Capital Markets, I wouldn’t have been kicked out because it is a government organisation. Anyways, that’s life,” he said.
Lehman’s India employees do have some time to plan their moves as the country’s operations would be the last to be hit. “This means it could take four months before all the offices shut. So, we have time to hunt for jobs,” said an employee working at the Ceejay House office. According to sources familiar with the development, the employees of Lehman India will get their severance packages by early October.
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