In Ireland, banking is respectable again

Finance ▶ The industry’s reputation recovers from the 2008 collapse ▶ “Not as glamorous as it was, but it’s seen as a viable career option”

Reviled during Ireland’s financial crisis, banking is back in vogue for the country’s young and ambitious. More students are seeking careers in finance, with Trinity College Dublin spending €70 million ($77 million) on a new

business school to meet rising demand and University College Dublin reporting a 10 percent increase in applications for financerelated courses over the past four years. Allied Irish Banks said in November that it will restart its college recruitment program, and Bank of Ireland plans to expand its program to 2008 levels next year.

While people in Greece and Poland focused their anger on politicians during the European debt crisis, Irish ire was aimed more at the financial industry, which was left crippled from lending to property developers and needed €64 billion of taxpayer money for a bailout. Bankers were spit at, egged, threatened, and vilified for bringing on the worst banking crisis in the euro region. Yet many young people aren’t deterred. “You have to be responsible for yourself and your own career, rather than listening to people ask why you want to be a banker,” says Jamie Hennessy, 25, who started studying finance in 2008 just as the debacle began.

About 62,000 people work in finance in Ireland, from back- office clerks to top executives, according to the latest figures from the government’s statistics office. Although that’s up from the beginning of the year, it’s still 10 percent below the peak in 2009. Along with newcomers, finance veterans from other countries are arriving in Dublin. “The perception of Ireland was of a small economy that had overheated and imploded,” says Alan Werlau, an American in his 50s who moved to Dublin a month ago to work as a strategist at Davy, the country’s largest securities firm, after stints on Wall Street. “I was amazed at the speed of the recovery in Ireland. The reaction from friends and family in the U. S. was amazingly positive. No one said, ‘Are you crazy?’ Only Irish people asked that.”

Financial companies including Citigroup and quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group have operations in Dublin, on the banks of the River Liffey. In all, about 35,000 people work for international financial companies, and the government is aiming to add 10,000 jobs in the industry within five years. “We have come through to the other side now,” says Andrew Burke, who heads the business school at Trinity. “If anything, internationally it’s seen as a plus to have transformed from an economic crash to high economic growth. Banking is probably still not as glamorous as it was, but it’s seen as a viable career option.”

The Bank of Ireland got more than 2,000 applications from college graduates and hired about 100 this year, it says. The starting salary is about €28,000. Hennessy, who joined the bank’s graduate training program in 2014, recalls that in 2008 worries about the consequences of the unfolding crisis “certainly crossed my mind,” but “I was convinced that if I wanted it enough, I would be good enough to find something.” She adds: “I’m definitely going to stay in finance.” �Dara Doyle

“I was amazed at the speed of recovery in Ireland. The reaction from friends and family in the U.S. was amazingly positive. No one said, ‘Are you crazy?’ Only Irish people asked that” The bottom line As Ireland’s economy recovers, the government wants to add 10,000 jobs in the financial industry in five years.