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Discover the Financial Markets Advisory team at BlackRock
Career Services / 12 October 2016
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BlackRock was founded 28 years ago by eight entrepreneurs who wanted to start a very different company; one that combined the best of a financial leader and a technology pioneer. A company with a singular purpose: making a difference in the lives of the parents and grandparents, doctors and teachers who entrust us with their money – and their futures – every day. Today, as the world’s largest asset manager, with over $4.9 trillion under management, BlackRock brings together financial leadership, worldwide reach and state-of-the-art technology to provide answers to the millions of investors who entrust their financial futures to the company.

Financial Markets Advisory (‘FMA’) is an exciting team within our BlackRock Solutions division that supports financial institutions and government entities on a wide range of consulting, analytical, capital markets and strategic advisory services. It combines BlackRock’s deep asset expertise and insights into financial markets with distinctive capabilities in advanced analytics based on its Aladdin platform. The global team consists of over 200 employees based around the globe, managing or advising on over $8 trillion of assets since 2008. In the past four years, FMA has executed over 460 assignments across 31 countries.

Take a look at a few of the FMA analysts and the projects they have recently been working on to get a better idea of the types of projects in FMA!

brigitteBrigitte
First year analyst

Personal background
Brigitte was born in The Netherlands. She obtained a BSc. Economics & Business from Erasmus University Rotterdam, MSc. International Relations from University of Amsterdam, and a MSc. Finance – Financial Markets & Regulation from Duisenberg School of Finance. Brigitte speaks Dutch, English, Spanish and French.

Project description

FMA was engaged to provide an integrated stress testing solution for a large European bank. The first phase of the project, which lasted 3 months, entailed a gap analysis to determine the scope of work for the subsequent phases of the project.

Tasks within the project

  • Member of the work-stream responsible for the assessment of the risk and finance models of the bank (e.g. credit risk, net income risk, liquidity risk)
  • Conducted research on regulatory requirements (from multiple regulators worldwide) and best industry practices with regards to risk stress testing models in order to define the target state of the underlying models framework
  • Analysed documents provided by the client to determine the current state of their underlying models
  • Worked with senior project members in building a business case and implementation roadmap for future phases of the project
  • The project included numerous meetings with the client in Europe and Asia

harryHarry Xu
Second year analyst

Personal background

Harry was born and raised in China. He obtained his Bachelor degree in Math from the University of Cambridge and a Master degree in Financial Mathematics from London School of Economics.

Project description

FMA was engaged in a project with a Cypriot bank where we leveraged several internal models to develop modification strategy for client’s non-performing portfolios given its many operational and loss budget constraints.

Tasks within the project

  • Estimate probability of re-default for loans under different modifications through analysis of historical loan performance.
  • Align the existing model with client specific strategy and operational style in a bid to model portfolio evolution with higher precision.
  • Running model under different scenarios to identify factors having greatest impact on client’s portfolios in the near future.

Favourite part of FMA

“I like FMA because it gives me the exposure to wide range of projects, clients and skill sets needed to succeed in the job ”

rebeccaRebecca
Second year analyst

Personal background

Rebecca was born in Germany and grew up in the United States. She obtained her Bachelor of Science at Brown University in Applied Mathematics, and is fluent in English and German.


Project description

BRS was engaged on behalf of a bank in southeast Europe, with the objective of estimating Credit Loss Projects (“CLPs”) for the client’s domestic loan portfolio. The project included an individual review of more than €5BN in large commercial exposures and 1,000+ commercial and residential real estate collaterals.

Tasks within the project

  • Member of the Project Management Office (“PMO”) team responsible for the conduct and quality assurance of the exercise. One of two members who managed the client relationship, organised internal workstreams and prepared key deliverables.
  • Set-up and led meetings with senior bank stakeholders to iterate on key inputs for project deliverables.
  • Prepared 100+ page document with project team detailing key assumptions, modelling methodology and credit loss projection results for delivery to the client. This included engaging with portfolio management teams to understand BRS asset class specific modelling infrastructure.
  • Project included frequent travel to client site over a duration of 3 months.

steliosStelios
Third year analyst

Personal background

Stelios was born and ra
ised in Cyprus. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts at Brown University in Economics and is fluent in English and Greek.

Project background

FMA was engaged to provide support to the European Central Bank in the 2016 stress testing exercise that aims to assess the resilience of financial institutions to adverse market developments as well as identify potential systemic risks in the EU financial system.

Key Highlights of the project

  • Assessment of the potential development of the capital position of the Eurozone’s largest banks over a period of three years
  • Constant coordination and communication across vast FMA and Client project team
  • Extensive traveling to provide on-site client

“Working in FMA has provided me with an incredible opportunity to work on high impact projects for both official institutions and banks, with an amazing team of people, across numerous European cities”.

anaAna
Third year analyst

Personal background

Ana was born in Romania and grew up in the United States. She attended University of St Andrews in Scotland where she obtained a MA First Class (Hons) in Financial Economics. Ana is fluent in English and Romanian.

Project description

FMA is engaged on behalf of a European regulator to monitor the compliance of an EU Bank with its restructuring plan. FMA is tasked with supervising progress on the execution of the Bank’s restructuring plan and compliance with a set of commitments, periodically reporting to the regulator and proposing corrective actions if deviations from the plan are noticed.

Tasks within the project

  • First point of contact with the regulator and the Bank
  • Assisted in creating the monitoring framework for the Bank
  • Constant monitoring of the Bank against the requirements imposed on the Bank by the regulator
  • Attend meetings with the Bank to assess its progress
  • Responsible for writing the periodic report to the regulator on the progress and compliance of the Bank

“My favourite part of FMA is the ability to work with and learn from such a diverse group of people. The team involves people from a variety of different countries and educational backgrounds.”

The Financial Markets Advisory team are expanding and will be hiring Graduate Analysts into the Frankfurt office. If you are interested in working for FMA, speak fluent German and graduate between September 2016 and July 2017 you will be eligible to apply for a position in the Frankfurt FMA team. Please apply online at www.blackrockoncampus.com

Once you apply online, you will be sent a link to complete a ‘virtual cover letter’ – this must be completed within three days of submitting your applications. For successful candidates, this will be followed by first round live video interviews and an assessment centre day in the Frankfurt office.

 

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