Anamaria Bobos

Career in Finance 

Anamaria Bobos is an operations analyst markets officer at one of the world’s largest investment banks, Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She joined the firm, working in their Chester office, having left a role in the finance department at luxury fashion house Burberry.

Business is a subject that has interested Anamaria since she moved to the UK from her home town of Cluj, in the region of Transylvania, in Romania, in 2010. During the past eight years in the UK, she has gone from learning English, attaining a GCSE in the subject alongside maths, through to completing a Masters in Accounting and Finance at Staffordshire University.

GCSEs to Masters Degree

“I was working in the healthcare industry,” she explained. “I came to the UK for work experience in 2010 and, after the year passed, I decided to apply for a permanent place as there were more opportunities for me here. None of my family are here and they were not that happy I decided to stay but they came to my graduation and I travel home once a year to see them.”

After completing her GCSEs at Stoke-on-Trent College, Anamaria took a job at a motorway Road Chef, as part of the McDonalds team. Here she rose to the role of shift manager and gained a Level 3 Diploma in Shift Management. Using her qualifications, she was advised to progress to a Higher National Diploma (HND) by her college tutor.

She began the HND in Business at Staffordshire University in 2013 and, after finishing in 2015, signed up to the top-up year to gain a full honours degree in Business. As part of the degree, she had to complete 15 hours of work experience, which unexpectedly took her down a career path in finance.

She explained: “We had to do a PDP (Personal Development Planning) module that involved work experience in a different role to what I was doing as a job. I spoke to my manager about it and they asked me to do admin with the accounts team. When one of the accounts team members later left, I was asked to take over the job, which I would never have had the courage to do if it wasn’t for that module.”

The following year Anamaria started a Masters in Accounting and Finance at the University. She was also the co-founder of the Business Society and a student rep for the Masters degree. She added: “My time at Staffordshire University opened up a lot of opportunities for me.”

Burberry to Investment Banking

After gaining her Masters in 2017, she took a job as finance – OTC cash accounting at Burberry. She was involved in transferring the office processes from the London HQ to the new Business Shared Services in Leeds. She said: “I was running a portfolio of 15 sites across five countries, transferring 20 processes in the cash accounting business and doing a lot of knowledge transfer, training new staff in the Leeds office. I learned a lot of project management and organisational skills.”

Having moved to Leeds for the job, Anamaria was keen to get back to Stoke-on-Trent when the right opportunity arose. She joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch at the end of February 2018, settling into her role as a delegated reporting officer, which involves reporting investments funds for various asset classes on behalf of clients to the global trade repository to comply with EMIR regulation. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) can then monitor and investigate if the funds are reported in a complete, timely and accurate manner.

Anamaria is now a Equities Product Controller with the bank, and has seen a number of promotions since her inception. “Within just three years, there are lots of promotion opportunities within this business and industry. And within 10 years I would like to see myself as a director. What I learned at Staffordshire University has been essential for me and I’m really proud of what I have achieved so far. I would advise anyone to take up the courses for a career in this industry.”

Year of graduation

2017