Forget the credit crunch, Edinburgh’s SVM Asset Management more than doubled its profits in 2007, and has plans to hire.

According to chief exec Colin McLean, SVM is on the lookout for new investment analysts after its bumper year. Although past hires have come from London as well as Edinburgh, McLean says there’s a “body of experience” in Scotland’s life offices, which is waiting to be tapped.

SVM could be a good home for ambitious analyst types. MacLean says SVM is all about a “bottom-up, stock picking strategy that is very much geared to individual company analysis”.

He adds that the company’s recent success was down to exposure to resources stocks and wariness of financials.

Mike Leeman at Michael Page says there’s definitely a supply of analysts in Edinburgh, who might be free to fill the SVM vacancies – particularly given that senior slots are hard to come by: “People training as CFAs are looking to take the next step to be more senior analysts. But there is not a lot of internal movement so they are looking externally.”

Samuel Hendry, consultant at Change Recruitment, says there is demand for experienced candidates but things have slowed down after the massive growth spell in recent years.

Meanwhile, rumours last week of analyst redundancies at HBOS in Edinburgh were scotched by the bank, which said it had reduced staff by 90 in its UK-wide joint ventures – mostly in structured and acquisition finance areas.