One of China’s best-known finance professors had a surprising call for the country’s next generation of bankers when they graduated this summer: there was no need to be ashamed of their choice of profession.
“Some people have started to think that the finance industry is worthless because it does not seem to involve hardcore technology, or because it supposedly creates unnecessary transactional costs,” said Li Feng, deputy dean of Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Advanced Institute of Finance, in a hall filled with 800 finance graduates.
“Some of our alumni have even developed a sense of shame about their profession . . . but that mindset needs to be corrected,” Li said in July, adding that bankers should instead feel “deeply proud” of their work.