SALARY SURVEY 2013 - Robert Walters Singapore

Although economic fundamentals(i.e. inflation and interest rates,budget deficit and consumerconfidence) remained relativelystrong in Switzerland in 2012,recruitment volumes fellthroughout the year as globalmarket conditions worsened.Financial institutions, a keysector of the Swiss economy,were particularly under pressure.However, this was a consequenceof increasing regulatory pressurerather than the Eurozonefinancial crisis. As internationalregulations put pressure onfirms to increase transparency,assets under managementand margins decreased, whichled to redundancies in someorganisations and an overalldecrease in recruitment levels.Most recruitment that occurredin the financial services sectortook place in specific niche areas– for example, risk and complianceprofessionals were in demanddue to the aforementionedregulatory squeeze. However,insurance companies provedmore resilient to the crisis thanbanks and were relatively activein the recruitment market –particularly in the first half ofthe year. Within the commercialsector, we saw steady demandfor talent in some niche areassuch as energy and medicaldevices businesses. We sawspecific demand within theseemployers for local GAAPand transfer pricing expertise,along with other Swiss-specifictreasury and tax knowledge.Most recruitment took placewithin Swiss companies, whichprimarily sought candidateswith local experience. However,these professionals were inshort supply as the majorityof individuals who sought newopportunities were internationalcandidates. By contrast, demanddecreased within internationalcompanies headquarteredin Switzerland, which insteadsought to fill vacancies bypromoting or transferring stafffrom other offices.While overall salary levelsgenerally remained stable,we saw slight increases in someisolated areas. As an example,heads of treasury with 5 years’experience earned up to CHF200kduring the year, compared toCHF200k in 2011.The recruitment market remainsdifficult to predict and we do notexpect to see significant salaryincreases over the next 12 months.However, we are confident thatstrong economic conditions inSwitzerland and high productivitylevels will lead to job levelsincreasing subject to the restof Europe continuing to recoverfrom the economic crisis.SwitzerlandRobert Walters Global Salary Survey 2013 2012