Macquarie Group’s recent acquisitions in the US and Canada look unlikely to open up a raft of North American jobs for Australian bankers.

Last month the Aussie i-bank announced plans to buy Canadian financial advisory firm Blackmont Capital and rebrand it as Macquarie Private Wealth.

A spokesperson for Macquarie says the bank will mainly recruit local staff for Blackmont, although Earl Evans, former head of Macquarie Retail Broking, will provide support to Blackmont CEO Bruce Kagan in expanding the business.

“There will be an Australian project manager in place for the integration over the next two months, while HR, IT and marketing people will be moving in and out of Toronto over that period,” he adds.

The Blackmont deal comes hot on the heels of earlier Canadian acquisition Tristone Capital Global, and two US buyouts: Delaware Investments and the downstream natural gas unit of Constellation Energy.

Macquarie hasn’t just been buying in the US, it’s been hiring too, with the addition of several senior bankers from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Barclays Capital. They include heads of credit trading, credit research, and banking groups covering oil and gas, telecoms, transportation and logistics, and restructuring.

But despite Macquarie’s recent recruitment spree and an improving American banking sector, pickings are slim for Australians who want work on Wall Street, especially with many US bankers still unemployed, says Jon Michel, principal of Jon Michel Executive Search.

“It's like trying to sell coal to Newcastle. The best place to get on board with US firms is here in Australia rather than going to America to do it,” he adds

However Michel dismisses fears that the financial crisis will cause Australians to shy away from Wall Street in the longer term.

And another headhunter believes the US is already coming back on the career radar of Australian bankers, particularly those with capital markets experience.

“It’s only a little bit of movement in certain areas. However, if people can get in on the bottom of the curve, when things hit their stride, they’ll get access to much bigger deals and volumes than they’ll get in Australia,” says Oliver Darkes, director at Carmichael Fisher.