The flight from NAB continues

The flood of departures from National Australia Bank (NAB) continued last week as three senior institutional dealers left the bank in London and New York, reports RiskNews’ sister publication FX Week .

Kieran Salter, global head of forex sales to financial institutions in London, Jacqueline Steel, head of forex sales in New York, and Tony Beard, senior institutional forex sales manager in London, all left the bank in the latest round of staff exits since NAB’s A$360 million (US$281 million) forex scandal earlier this year.

They follow at least eight foreign exchange staff that left in London as reports surfaced of low morale on the trading floor following the crisis. This included head of European forex, Steve Walker, head of forex forwards in Europe, Andrew Brodie, head of interbank forex sales for Europe and Asia, Adam Gazzoli, head of risk management, Bart Thomson, and senior forex options structurer Walter Colebatch. Also forex options structurer Andrew Hardman, senior proprietary trader Michael Frankis and senior forex market strategist Greg McKenna.

More recently, institutional sales dealer Jerry Ballschmider left the New York office in April and Nigel Russell left in June from Sydney.

This adds to the staff that left after an investigation into the three-year fraud, which came to light in January, revealed lax management practices and faulty risk management at the bank. Co-heads of global foreign exchange, Gary Dillon and Peter Cunningham in Melbourne, left in March, along with senior managers in corporate and institutional banking, risk management, as well as the bank’s chief executive and chairman.

The four traders responsible for the forex losses were sacked.