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Cost of living adjustment London offices of us firms
Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2016 9:01 pm
by Anonymous User
anyone know the current colas for Dpw, skadden, and csm? I assume they will move down in the coming months but looking for a baseline.
Re: Cost of living adjustment London offices of us firms
Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 5:44 pm
by Anonymous User
I worked at CSM as a paralegal in London a million years ago, but the answer is, this is not what you should be basing your decision on. Essentially, you will make out fine if you go over there. Your rent might be higher, but your firm will more than make up for it in COLA, you generally get all your moving expenses paid (incl. if you want to ship furniture), your taxes done, and a few weeks of corporate housing when you arrive. When I was there, the exchange rate was fluctuating quite a bit, and the London CSM office was small enough that if enough associates whined, the partners would readjust it every few months or so.
I would be much more worried about whether the HY market is going to dry up and there is less for associates to do (unlikely, but Brexit has definitely spooked issuers). But those firms would just move you to a different group anyway.
Hope that sort of helps.
Re: Cost of living adjustment London offices of us firms
Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 5:47 pm
by Anonymous User
Anonymous User wrote:anyone know the current colas for Dpw, skadden, and csm? I assume they will move down in the coming months but looking for a baseline.
Sorry--I thought of one more thing. You do need to take into account whether you will have the ability to make retirement contributions if you have no US income for a year. So sometimes, you cannot contribute tax-free to a 401K if you have no US-source income, which is not something that I factored in when I went over there (but I was technically a US-seconded employee, as staff, not a local hire). You can ask associates over there what their thoughts are.
Also, I will say that while doing HY cap mkts work was rough in terms of all-nighters and tons of printer time, being in London was awesome (it was my second time living there), and there is a very strongly European "take your 4 weeks of vacation" mentality, instead of the US version of "don't actually take your vacation." That alone made it really fricking cool. Also, if you found that you had no work commitments on a Friday, you would literally round up some friends and fire up tickets to all sorts of European destinations. It's just cool. Get yourself over there. It's so fun!