It is as if last year's horrors in the investment banking sector never happened.
In Hong Kong, banks that avoided the worst of the credit crunch, including Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Standard Chartered, are on a hiring spree.
Even Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now 70 per cent owned by the British government and is dismantling its high street banking business in Asia, is searching for new investment bankers in Hong Kong and on the mainland.
After retrenching in China last year, the global banks have decided that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the mainland economy will remain buoyant for years to come.
They are hiring in response to global money managers' enthusiasm for shares in Chinese companies. Since January, foreign investors have been piling cash into China because they reckon the region's businesses will grow fast while economic recovery in the West will be sluggish.
'In the West, there is probably going to be a long period of slow growth. Against this backdrop, faster-growing Chinese companies are attractive,' said Anthony Bolton, the highly respected investments president at fund manager Fidelity International.
Barclays is hunting for stock-market traders and bankers who can advise companies raising money via Hong Kong initial public offerings.
