Alibaba and Tencent have been busy hiring from the Asian banking sector for the past two years. Our recent analysis of the latter’s workforce showed that its M&A, investment and strategy teams are littered with ex-bankers and research analysts from the likes of Deutsche Bank and Citi in Hong Kong.
Not all Chinese technology giants are so keen on banks as a source of talent, however. JD.com, the Beijing headquartered e-commerce company which boasts more than 300m active users, has few bankers within its ranks. This may change in the near future as the firm makes further investments overseas, in particular in Europe, where it plans to start operating its online shopping platform in 2019.
In the meantime, if you want to move from a bank to JD.com, it will be “tough going”, says a Hong Kong-based technology recruiter. But some experienced banking professionals have still made it into the tech firm. Here’s a selection (based on their public profiles) – let them be your inspiration.
Ernest Fung, senior director, head of international corporate
One of JD.com’s most high-profile picks from the finance sector, Fung joined back in 2014 from Citi. He had been with the US bank for almost 11 years, latterly as a Hong Kong-based director in TMT investment banking, according to his profile. Fung, who is one of several TMT bankers recruited by Chinese tech firms in recent years, holds a Master of Financing Engineering from Cornell University.
Tang Yu, enterprise security architect
One of a small group of technologists at JD.com who boasts experience in financial services, Yu has been with the company for just five months. He spent the previous six and a half years working in financial tech roles, first at DBS (where he was a Shanghai-based VP from 2011 to 2014) and then at NASDAQ-listed investment and trading firm Yintech, where he was group security and operations director.
Xiaolin Zheng, investment director
Zheng works for JD.com in Hong Kong, and like Fung he has a technology investment banking background. After a year-long stint as a graduate recruit at BAML, Zheng moved to Deutsche Bank in 2010 and worked in the firm’s TMT corporate finance team for three years. Zheng went in-house in 2015, taking a corporate development role at Chinese consumer conglomerate LeEco, according to his profile. He joined JD.com the following year and is part of its international investment and business development team.
Nancy Xu, investment manager
Xu started her career at Citi in Hong Kong in 2012 and spent three years there as an industry analyst covering the consumer, healthcare, alternative assets and TMT sectors. Like Zheng, she then did a brief stint at LeEco (JD.com is an investor in the cash-strapped company) before joining JD.com to work in group strategy and investment. Like many of JD.com’s banking recruits, Xu studied outside of Asia – she has a BBA from the University of Michigan, according to her online profile.
Chencheng Wang, business analytics manager and product manager
JD.com now has enough clout in the global job market to hire from the US. Wang is a case in point. Before joining JD.com in 2016, she worked for two and a half years as a VP in credit risk modeling and scoring analytics at Citi in New York. Wang is now in charge of JD.com’s 9N business analytics platform, an online product that analyses customer behaviour for precision marketing based on AI models, according to her profile.
Stella Shen, senior director, risk management, JD Finance
Shen leads the risk management department at JD Finance, the company’s financial technology arm, which is currently trying to raise $1.9bn in new investment to compete with larger rival Ant Financial. Stanford graduate Shen came on board in 2014, following a stint of almost two years at Deutsche Bank where she had been a VP and head of CRM portfolio management. Like Wang, Shen also worked for Citi in New York – she was a risk manager in the credit cards division there between 2005 and 2008, according to her public profile.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com
Related articles:
These Hong Kong bankers have all left finance to work for TencentWhy work for a bank when you can work for Pony Ma?
Hong Kong banks trying (but often failing) to hire from Google and AlibabaWork for Google? Banks in Hong Kong want to hire you.
Now it’s Grab’s turn to poach people from banks in SingaporeFollowing the lead set by Google, Grab is raiding Singapore’s banking sector to fuel its recruitment. Grab's latest senior hire comes from OCBC.
Image credit: FangXiaNuo, Getty