Nova Scotia has successfully courted financial firms to set up shop in its capital city of Halifax. Now, those firms are courting recent graduates, expatriates and anyone else with financial expertise.

“We’re truly on the verge of something very exciting. There are tremendous opportunities,” says Stephen Lund, president and CEO of Nova Scotia Business Inc. , the province’s business development agency.

What is needed to realize those opportunities is human resources, he adds: “The No. 1 issue today is people. Everything else is secondary.”

Nova Scotia, with more post-secondary institutions per capita than any other province in the country, is well-poised to meet the demand for bodies with a finance background. In fact, meetings between the universities and the new firms have already taken place.

“We’re in relatively good shape to meet the demand, but it will cause a bit of tightening for sure,” says Ian Hutchinson, an associate professor at Acadia University’s Manning School of Business.

Now, the word is getting out to the degree holders. With the help of NSBI, a sold-out panel presentation that attracted hundreds of young people was held at the Westin Hotel in Halifax for business school students throughout the province.

Featured at that event were the Big Five: Citco Fund Services, Meridian Fund Services Ltd., Flagstone Management Services (Halifax) Ltd., Marsh Captive Solutions and Butterfield Fund Services Canada Ltd.

“The opportunities here used to be fairly bleak. Now, there are immense opportunities that people do not fully appreciate,” says Scott Montreuil, a Halifax native and senior manager with Citco.

Quite simply, says Pat Donnolly, a senior manager with Meridian, “we’re really looking for university graduates.”

Here’s why the “For Hire” sign is out: The financial services firms that have flooded into Halifax, many from Bermuda, are growing like wildfire. Citco, which has 3,200 staff worldwide and $600 billion in assets under management, opened its doors in Halifax with five staff in February. Forty people are now on the payroll. “The office can hold 180, and we want 300 to 400 staff in the next five to seven years,” says Montreuil.

Marsh Captive Solutions, which employs 26,000 people in more than 100 countries, had only one employee in Halifax a year ago. Now it has 40. That number, says Patrick Ferguson, assistant vice president, is expected to hit upward of 150.

At nearby Butterfield, the appetite for talent is just as voracious. In March, there was a single employee in the company’s newly opened Nova Scotia office, which provides fund accounting and administrative services to hedge funds and other alternative investment vehicles. Now, there are 30, notes Sylvain LaCoursiere, managing director of Butterfield Fund Services.

Not only will these newcomers continue to grow — and hire more and more employees as they ramp up — but the provincial government, through NSBI, is actively courting more firms. “We’re being called the next Dublin,” says Lund, referring to Ireland’s capital city, which went from being the “basket case of Europe to the No. 1 performing city.”

“More announcements are coming,” Lund promises.

That is good news, and not-so-good news, for other financial firms in the province. They will feel the pinch of the big boys, at least in the short term. “I believe it will put pressure on the salaries of our assistants,” says Kevin Cochrane, a financial planner with Assante Financial Management Ltd. in Dartmouth, N.S.

That pressure will be felt in two ways, Cochrane says: First, top performers may be lured from smaller to larger companies; and second, there will be greater demand to raise salaries, which currently run anywhere from $18,000 to $45,000 for a financial advisor’s assistant.

In the longer term, however, the arrival of the major players will be good for business — everyone’s business. “The more companies you have, the more alternatives there are. There is a Plan B,” says Beste Alpargun, vice president of equity research at Citadel Securities Inc. in Halifax.

However, local companies will have to be realistic about new hires, Alpargun says: “We will need to remunerate, in some way, people who move here.”

Such realism needs to infuse the plans for growth, Hutchinson says. Competition for talent is not occurring only in the local market. “It would be a mistake to look only at the effect of these new firms moving into Halifax,” he says. “There is great competition from Toronto, Alberta and internationally.” IE

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