Don’t put your daughter in financial services, Mrs Worthington

By Alec Hogg.For the first time, the career advice offered to a pal just over a year back now feels right..He had been scrambling up the banking hierarchy when an unsolicited offer arrived from a large telecoms group. My friend was caught in two minds, especially after the bank came back with a very generous counter..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.After unpacking the options many times over a couple months, my suggestion was he accept the new challenge. How much that well-intentioned advice contributed to the decision, I'll never know. But he duly ditched financial services and hopped aboard the mobile train..My chum had followed a path that seemed obvious for many of the brightest graduates of the 1990s..Those days, financial services was the only real game for the cream of emerging crops. Wall Street sucked in something 90% of the top graduates from the US's Ivy League colleges. It got so bad Warren Buffett regularly used his Berkshire AGMs to rant about the danger of this lop-sided allocation of his country's talent towards "helpers" and "super-helpers"..The imbalance spread around the world, including to South Africa..I remember a recruitment discussion in the mid-noughties with a 26 year old banker who had answered an advert to join our internet media business for a position in our business development team..All went swimmingly until we raised the numbers. Our youthful prospective employee, a mid-level project manager at a big bank, suddenly realised joining us meant dropping her salary by over half – she was earning as much as our two highest paid execs combined..With the financial services sector coming from such an inflated base, it shouldn't surprise us that the Global Financial Crisis pricked the remuneration bubble. What might come as news, though, is that mobile phone businesses appear to be the new magnet..African mobile giant MTN provides a useful example..Earlier this year, the company announced the recruitment of Johannesburg-born Rob Shuter as its new CEO..He was a big catch for the SA-headquartered company. After a spell as head of Vodafone's business in the Netherlands, in October 2015 Shuter was given the added responsibility of running Vodafone's smaller European markets and promoted to the Group's executive committee..A chartered accountant, soon after qualifying the ambitious Shuter chose Standard Bank where he spent five years as head of Investment Banking. After getting caught up in the Tech stock boom of the late 1990s, he returned to financial services heading Nedbank's biggest unit, Retail Banking..Shuter was well ahead of the banking-for-mobile pack. After nine years with Nedbank he lost a two-horse race for the top job when Tom Boardman tapped his former BOE colleague Mike Brown. So, in 2009, Shuter left for the CFO post at Vodacom South Africa..The Deloitte alumnus returns to his homeland to take up the MTN reins in July next year. He will renew his acquaintance with the man who hired him, MTN chairman Phutuma Nhleko, a client from Shuter's Standard Bank days..Shuter will also meet up there with Stephen van Coller (49) now six weeks into his new job as Vice President of MTN's Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions. Van Coller, widely tipped to eventually succeed Barclays Africa CEO Maria Ramos, shocked his colleagues in July when resigning from the banking group. He had been there a decade and was CEO of the highly regarded Corporate and Investment Bank..MTN's other high profile acquisition from financial services is Ralph Mupita, who created a stir at the end of last month when resigning as CEO of Old Mutual Emerging Markets. Mupita had a stellar 15 year career with Big Green and, after its breakup is concluded, seemed in line for bigger challenges..With apologies to Noel Coward's 1935 classic, Mrs Worthington should no longer switch her daughter from the stage to the bank. Mobile phone companies are a better bet. For investors, too. Because talent always flows to where the opportunities are best. Especially those at the very top.

Don’t put your daughter in financial services, Mrs Worthington

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