Hedge funds double IT jobs

Date: Monday, May 7, 2007
Author: Jonathan Moules, Financial Times

The hedge fund industry has doubled its share of new IT jobs in financial services in the last 12 months making it a rival to traditional fund managers in its demand for computer experts.

A study of 6,000 new IT positions in financial services by ReThink Recruitment, an IT staffing company, found that 6 per cent were taken by hedge funds in the first quarter of 2007, up from 3 per cent a year earlier.

This compared with traditional funds, which acc-ounted for 7 per cent of new IT positions during the first quarter of 2007, up from 6 per cent 12 months before.

Investment banking continues to take the lion's share of new IT jobs in financial services with 61 per cent of the total in the first quarter of 2007, up from 57 per cent a year earlier.

Hedge funds are investing more in technology and software to develop more reliable risk management and management tools.

Jon Butterfield, managing director of ReThink, said: "A couple of years ago hedge funds' requirements for technology skills were relatively insignificant. That has chan-ged dramatically as hedge funds have become more competitive with each other and they have encroached on traditional fund managers' territory."