Nervous Lehman employees looking elsewhere?

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Many employees at Lehman Brothers LEH.N, noted for their loyalty to the investment bank, may be looking for jobs elsewhere as their employer's health worsens -- and recruiters are anxious to give them a hand.

One employee in London said on Thursday he has received several calls from headhunters, as rivals see hiring opportunities in the expected exodus -- which would deepen the pool of talent made available by the global credit crunch and financial-sector layoffs.

Lehman had 25,935 employees at the end of August.

"Lehman people are starting to wake up and see what else is out there," said Gary Goldstein, president of Whitney Group, a New York-based executive search group that specializes in financial services and counts Lehman as a client.

"I'm in touch with a lot of people there who are very nervous, and up until now had been loyalists who never considered anything other than staying at Lehman for their career," he said in an interview.

However, some employees say they're holding on, and hoping the storied Wall Street firm will be able to survive intact as it scrambles to unload assets that have muddied its balance sheet and crippled its stock.

"It would be a shame if it all fell through," said the Lehman employee in London. "I enjoy working here. I had quite a few calls from headhunters about a month ago.

"When you called, I thought it was a headhunter," he told Reuters.

Another employee outside Lehman's building in Canary Wharf said: "The mood is OK, it's business as usual. You've got to do your job."

Hanging over Lehman is the cautionary tale of Bear Stearns, the investment bank that collapsed and ended up in JPMorgan Chase & Co's (JPM.N) hands after a fire sale earlier this year -- leaving employees little time for career planning.

"That was a bad experience and people don't want to replicate it," Goldstein said.

Other headhunters pointed to Lehman's strategy of hanging onto talent as an impediment to jumping ship: Employees, who own about 30 percent of the firm, were paid more in stock and less in cash this year.

"For a lot of people, their savings are tied into Lehman, so they can ill-afford to leave," said John Challenger, chief executive of global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Shaun Springer, chief executive of London-based recruitment firm Napier Scott, said he had only managed to headhunt two senior employees from Lehman in the last six months, and is "desperate for" their proprietary traders.

"A lot of headhunters think that the staff there are above average quality and that they should be looking to leave," Springer said.

"However, the real problem is that most of them have a lot of stock and they're unwilling to realize the loss themselves given that it's dropped ... off the price (that) they were awarded that stock."

Lehman's stock fell as much as 46 percent on Thursday as the Street questioned its plan, announced on Wednesday, to sell assets in order to clean up its books.

The shares were worth $4.33 on the New York Stock Exchange in afternoon trading -- off some 93 percent from the beginning of the year.

In the United States, credit market problems have led to more than 100,000 job losses in the financial sector, according to data from Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

A source at a European investment bank said the opportunity to pick up good bankers is now, with so many firms laying off staff.

"The best people will have been spotted and the big banks will have a talent wish list who they know might become available," the source said, adding that Lehman "is a good operation.

"It's a less competitive market out there, so you can be choosy.

(Additional reporting by Steve Slater in London, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)