This time last year, RBC Capital Markets was talking up an aggressive expansion in U.S. investment banking and was looking to hire in senior people to do this. Now, however, managing directors at the Canadian investment bank are leaving, and often turning up in some unexpected places.
Case in point is Guy Baron, a managing director in its leveraged finance business who left late last year, and has just arrived as an advisor at the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative. Baron has a background in technology advisory, so will be focused on information and communications technology (ICT) and strategic investments at the firm. Tony Blair’s firm provides funds to advisors which allow them to help governments get projects off the ground across Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Guinea, Nigeria and Ethiopia. Baron will work in Rwanda.
Baron is one of a number of MDs flooding out of RBC Capital Markets so far this year, however. Most of these exits have been in research, which – of course – is a risky place to work right now. Andrew Carter, a managing director in industrials research in London who joined the bank in 2010, left earlier this year. Meanwhile, Rob Sluymer, a managing director who’d worked for 26 years at RBC, joined independent research firm Fundstrat Global Advisors in New York in March.
Chip Fauver, co-COO of global research at the bank in New York, has now retired, while Bill Hoffmann, a managing director in high yield research, has also departed as has Eric N. Berg, a top-ranked equity researcher focused on insurance who joined as a managing director from Lehman Brothers.
Outside of research, top healthcare investment banker, Jason Schoenholtz, has joined Cantor Fitzgerald as a managing director in New York, following the appointment of RBC life sciences specialist Michael Kelly at Cantor in November. Quant MD Andrew Johnson is taking some time out of the industry after leaving late last year and Choot Lim, head of Asian index strategies at RBC Capital Markets in Hong Kong, also left last month.
RBC Capital Markets hasn’t actually announced any layoffs in the U.S, despite the recent departures. However, it said in September that it was cutting 15 investment bankers in London following a slow down in Europe.
Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com
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