"The French bank I work for fires its non-French people and keeps the French MDs"

I work for a French bank in London and it is cutting costs. People are being let go but they are almost never French.

A lot of the managing directors here are French. When job cuts are made, what seems to happen is that the French managing directors (MDs) club together and dismiss the non-French people at director level. The expensive French MDs almost always seem to stay on. 

The senior French people here have long careers here and are rotated around the world. The non-French people have a far more precarious existence and are the first to be let go. In some cases, the bank will promote unheard of people into senior roles. Their decisions can be unfathomable.

All of this makes the director role in a French bank a particularly difficult and dangerous one when you are non-French. You are expensive, you are not seen as critical, and you are shut out of the decision-making clique. 

You therefore have a few options. 

You can try and make MD as soon as possible. 

You can move to another bank. 

Or you can wait at director level, and hope they don't fire you too. 

None are easy! 

Cecil Cooke is a pseudonym 

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