People moves

Risk rounds up the people moves in February

Richard Armes, co-head of European interest rates at Morgan Stanley in London, has left the bank to join London-based hedge fund Brevan Howard. He departed in early February.

Morgan Stanley is not replacing Armes, and the other co-head, Jakob Hørder, will now take sole responsibility for the European interest rates business.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Five others are also believed to have left for Brevan Howard. In New York, executive director Matt Feldmann has left the bank, where he was head of foreign exchange options for North and South America. He had worked at Morgan Stanley in New York for nine years, with a primary focus on dollar vanilla and exotic options, as well as correlation trading. It is understood Feldmann has accepted a position as portfolio manager at Brevan Howard in Geneva, starting in the second quarter.

In London, there have been four other defections to Brevan Howard across foreign exchange and interest rates, including forex strategist Stephen Hull, who was hired in 2009 as co-head of global forex strategy from Nomura and was later promoted to global head of forex strategy. At Nomura, Hull headed forex research for Europe, having arrived at the bank as part of a 250-strong influx of Lehman Brothers employees at the end of 2008.

Paresh Patel has also left Morgan Stanley, where he worked in macro hedge fund sales, focusing on foreign exchange. He has previously worked with asset management firms Tudor Capital, Drawbridge and WMG Advisors between 2001 and 2007.

Other departures include James Watson, head of swaps trading excluding the euro, and Vito Santoro, a euro government bond trader. Watson has previously worked at Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, while Santoro was previously at Dresdner Kleinwort and Barclays Capital.

Brevan Howard declined to comment.

 

Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking (SG CIB) has promoted Dan Fields, formerly global head of trading, to co-deputy head of the global markets division. Sofiène Haj Taieb, formerly global head of cross-asset solutions, will share the same role with Fields. Based in Paris, both will report to Christophe Mianné, head of global markets, and will supervise trading and cross-asset solutions. They began in their new roles on February 1.

Meanwhile, Richard Quessette and Arnaud Sarfati have been appointed co-global heads of the cross-asset solutions business at SG CIB. Quessette was previously deputy global head of the cross-asset solutions business in charge of trading activities, while Sarfati was co-global head of financial engineering. Based in Paris, they will report to the new global markets management team.

Deutsche Bank has merged its foreign exchange spot and options businesses under single management in London, sparking a flurry of internal promotions. Kevin Rodgers, previously global head of forex derivatives, has been promoted to global head of foreign exchange spot, electronic trading and derivatives, based in London. He will continue to report to Zar Amrolia, the bank’s global head of forex in London.

“This appointment brings the spot and options businesses together under common management. It reflects the synergies both businesses can benefit from by combining effectively around key market developments such as the growth of e-commerce and streamlined trade workflows,” the bank said in an internal memo.

David Wayne, formerly global head of forex vanilla options, has replaced Rodgers as global head of forex derivatives, and Philip Wood and Greg Knight have become co-heads of forex spot trading. All three are based in London and will report to Rodgers.

Meanwhile, Robert Mandeno, former global head of spot and forex electronic commerce, will take on the new role of head of e-trading for Asia-Pacific. Mandeno has been based in London with Deutsche Bank since early 2008, and will relocate to New Zealand to take on his new role. Originally appointed as global head of forex spot and options in London, Mandeno dropped the responsibility for options but added spot and e-commerce in February 2009.

Brian Peters has joined American International Group (AIG) as head of the enterprise risk management group. He replaces Charlie Shamieh, who was promoted in January to become AIG’s corporate chief actuary. Peters was previously senior vice-president in charge of risk management at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At AIG, he will report to the chief risk officer, Sid Sankaran. Peters will be barred from working with the New York Fed, US Treasury or Federal Reserve Board for his first six months in the job, AIG said.

 

Michael Stockman has joined MF Global as chief risk officer, as the broker-dealer begins its transformation into an investment bank. Stockman joins from boutique broker-dealer CQ Solutions in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where he set up the risk management and capital markets advisory practice. Before starting there in 2008, he was chief risk officer for the Americas for UBS.Munir Javeri has also joined as MF Global’s first global head of trading – he was previously a partner at the equity hedge fund Gandhara Advisors, and will head MF Global’s prop trading operation.

Jon Corzine, who took over as chief executive in March 2010, says his plan is for MF Global “to transition from a broker, to a broker-dealer, and eventually to a commodities and capital markets-focused global investment bank”. As part of this strategy, MF Global was named on February 2 as a primary dealer by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, joining 19 others eligible to participate in open-market operations. The firm is also seeking to join derivatives clearing houses (Risk February 2011, pages 34–36).

 

LCH.Clearnet, the London-based clearing house, has named Ian Axe as chief executive of both the LCH.Clearnet Group holding company and its UK operating subsidiary, LCH.Clearnet. He was previously global head of operations and chief operating officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Barclays Capital, overseeing the integration of Lehman Brothers and the divestment of Barclays Global Investors. He also worked as chief operating officer for Absa Capital, the bank’s South African arm (Risk October 2006, page 82). His predecessor, Roger Liddell, announced his retirement last year, and will step down in favour of Axe in April.

 

The Financial Stability Industry Council, a lobbying group formed by the US banking industry in response to the Dodd-Frank Act, has named Don Truslow as its first executive director. Truslow was chief risk officer at Wachovia from 2000 to August 2008, when he stepped down in the face of the bank’s mounting losses to be replaced by Kenneth Phelan.

During Truslow’s time in office, Wachovia embarked on a string of acquisitions, culminating in the 2006 takeover of mortgage lender Golden West Financial. After losses hit $8.9 billion in the second quarter of 2008, largely related to bad loans, Truslow stepped down along with chief financial officer Tom Wurtz and chief executive Ken Thompson. The bank was eventually taken over by Wells Fargo at the peak of the crisis in October that year.

The Financial Stability Industry Council was formed by the US Financial Services Roundtable, a group comprising senior executives from 100 major financial services companies, to lobby Congress, the Federal Reserve and other regulators. The council will be made up of member companies’ chief risk officers.

 

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has hired Robert Ettinger from JP Morgan in London to head its foreign exchange options desk in New York. Ettinger will start in March and report locally to Tom Gillie, co-head of forex trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the Americas. He joins after eight years in forex options trading at JP Morgan in London, where he was jointly in charge of the correlation book, reporting locally to Kayhan Mirza, co-head of global forex options.

 

Martin Wheatley, previously chief executive of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, has joined the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) as managing director of the consumer and markets business unit. The UK Treasury confirmed he would also become chief executive of the Consumer Protection and Markets Authority when it is set up as one of the successors to the FSA in late 2012.

Under regulatory reform plans brought in by the current coalition government, the FSA is due to be split into two new regulators: the other will be the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), in charge of regulating systemically important financial firms, which will operate within the Bank of England. Hector Sants, currently chief executive of the FSA, has already been named as PRA chief executive and deputy governor for prudential regulation at the Bank of England.

The Bank of England will house a newly created Financial Policy Committee (FPC), in charge of macroprudential issues. Four external members of the FPC were also named in February. Former US Federal Reserve vice-chairman Donald Kohn will join the 11-strong committee, as will Alastair Clark, a visiting professor at Cass Business School in London, Michael Cohrs, the former co-head of investment banking at Deutsche Bank, and Richard Lambert, the former director-general of the Confederation of British Industry.

The rest of the committee will be made up of ex officio members: Bank of England governor Mervyn King and his three deputy governors, Sants, Charlie Bean and Paul Tucker; the bank’s executive directors for markets and financial stability, Paul Fisher and Andrew Haldane; the CPMA’s Martin Wheatley; FSA chairman Adair Turner; and an unnamed Treasury representative. King will chair the committee.

 

Citi has hired Antonio Reyes Miras as its first global head of electronic execution. He was previously global head of electronic trading for JP Morgan’s prime services division. Based at Citi’s London offices, he will report to Jerome Kemp, who joined the bank earlier this year as head of exchange-traded derivatives sales and clearing. Reyes Miras will be responsible for developing electronic execution services for listed derivatives markets.

Neil Barofsky, the US Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Sigtarp), will step down at the end of March. Barofsky, a former New York federal prosecutor, was appointed to oversee the programme in December 2008. In an interview published in Risk in November 2009 (pages 46–49), he reiterated criticisms – also made in his quarterly reports – of the US Treasury’s actions during and after the 2008 banking crisis.

In his resignation letter, he praised his office’s efforts to pursue Tarp-related fraud. “Sigtarp has developed an investigations division with perhaps the finest collection of white-collar criminal investigators ever assembled,” he wrote. But he also pointed out that several issues surrounding Tarp remain unresolved – in particular, the non-payment of dividends by rescued banks and the poor performance of the Home Affordable Modification Program.

Barofsky will be succeeded by the deputy inspector-general, Christy Romero, formerly counsel to Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Schapiro.

BNP Paribas is continuing to restructure its forex business in New York, according to a senior official at the French bank. It has created a solutions and structuring group for the Americas, led by Matt Salvner, head of fixed-income solutions for the Americas in New York. Salvner joined from Morgan Stanley last August.

“As we continue the build-out of the solutions platform begun last year and focus our structuring businesses on new products and opportunities, we have aligned these two business groups under the same umbrella. This will better support the expanding client and product breadth of fixed income for the Americas,” says Salvner.

James Davison, BNP Paribas’ new head of interest rate and forex structuring for the Americas, will report locally to Salvner. He is relocating to New York from London, where he was head of forex structuring for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

He joined BNP Paribas from Royal Bank of Scotland in 2006.

Davison has taken over a role previously filled by PK Sinha, former head of forex structuring for the Americas in New York. Remaining in New York, Sinha has moved to the bank’s forex sales team, covering hedge fund and institutional clients. He reports to Debra Solomon, managing director and co-head of forex sales to hedge funds.

 

Verena Ross, director of the UK Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) international division, is to move to the newly formed European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) as executive director. Ross will be responsible for the day-to-day running of Esma and will work with the chair, Steven Maijoor, who was confirmed in his post in February. Ross’s appointment also has to be confirmed by the European Parliament.

Ross joined the FSA on its formation in 1998 and worked as head of the chair’s office until 2000. She subsequently became director of strategy and risk, and moved to head the international division when it was set up as part of an overhaul of the regulator in 2009.

RBC Capital Markets has appointed Ian Pearce as its new head of European credit trading. Based in London, Pearce will report to John Greenslade, head of fixed income and currencies, Europe. Pearce arrives after a 10-year stint at UBS, where he held a number of roles, the most recent of which was co-head of sterling credit and European asset-backed securities. Green-slade had been filling in on an interim basis as head of European credit trading since August, after former head Phillip Gee left RBC to join Citi as its head of European investment-grade credit trading.

 

Barclays Capital has named Adrian Valenzuela as managing director and head of equities liquid markets distribution Asia-Pacific, a newly created position. Based in Hong Kong, Valenzuela will have responsibility for the distribution teams covering all modes of equity execution in the region, including cash equities, convertibles and equity flow derivatives. He will report to New York-based Richard Cunningham, head of equities distribution, Hong Kong-based Philippe El-Asmar, head of distribution, Asia Pacific, and Hong Kong-based Siggi Thorkelsson, head of equities for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific.

Valenzuela joins Barclays Capital from JP Morgan in London, where he was global co-head of equities distribution.

Reena Walia has joined the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) in New York as managing director of equities risk management. She was previously at Citigroup in New York, where she was head of investment products risk for the Americas. At DTCC, she will report to the chief risk officer, Douglas George, and will be responsible for equity risk management across DTCC’s three subsidiaries: the National Securities Clearing Corporation; the Depository Trust Company; and EuroCCP.

 

Sean McKessy has rejoined the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to head the regulator’s new whistleblower office, set up under the Dodd-Frank Act. McKessy was senior counsel in the SEC’s enforcement division from 1997 to 2000 before leaving to work in the corporate sector. In his new post, he will report to the SEC’s head of enforcement, Robert Khuzami. The Dodd-Frank Act includes a section encouraging whistleblowers by promising them a percentage of fines paid once a case has been brought – if the SEC imposes penalties totalling more than $1 million, a whistleblower who supplied original and relevant information can collect 10–30%. The act also directly forbids employers from victimising or firing whistleblowers.

Andy Hartree has joined Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets as director specialising in commodity derivatives for the client structuring group. He reports to Phil McCabe, head of client structuring. Hartree was previously at BNP Paribas, where he was a director in the energy derivatives sales and marketing team, focusing on the corporate energy market.

John Lee has joined Maybank in Kuala Lumpur as group chief risk officer. Lee was previously a partner with KPMG Business Advisory in Malaysia, specialising in Islamic finance, and was the firm’s global Islamic finance group co-ordinator. Lee has also worked on the risk management working group of the Islamic Financial Services Board, and is now a member of the board’s liquidity risk management working group.