It’s not just Deutsche Bank: Barclays is making redundancies in its equities sales and trading business too.
Barclays insiders say the bank made cuts to its London cash equities team yesterday, with further layoffs expected on both sides of the Atlantic. MiFID II is thought to have been the trigger for the redundancies.
Barclays declined to comment. The cuts are understood to have included much of the bank’s institutional corporate marketing team, which arranges corporate access meetings between equity researchers and institutional clients. The team is led in EMEA by George Carswell, whom Barclays hired from Goldman Sachs in 2013. Corporate access is separately chargeable under MiFID II and in a recent survey of fund managers by the Financial Times, 57% said they wouldn’t pay for it.
Equities sales professionals and equities sales traders are also understood to have gone. Dominic Watt, a equity sales trader focused on the banks sector, is said to be among the exits, along with Vijay Chauhan, a US-focused equity salesman in London. Both men are highly experienced: Watt began his career at UBS in 1998 and worked for ABN AMRO, Citi, Fox-Pitt, Kelton, and SocGen before Barclays; Chauhan began his career at Merrill Lynch in 2002 and joined Barclays from Lehman in 2008.
Insiders suggest that further cuts are coming, although only a handful of people have been affected so far. Barclays hired Stephen Dainton from Credit Suisse as head of its global equities business in September 2017. Dainton subsequently hired Nas Al-khudairi, Credit Suisse’s head of electronic products. Under Dainton and Al-khudairi, Barclays is thought to be building its electronic business while cutting areas of cash equities affected by MiFID II. The cuts are understood to be result of Dainton’s review of the business.
Revenues in Barclays’ equities business rose 28% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2018 (or 48% on a US$ basis), making it one of the best performing equities businesses in the industry. Barclays hired 18 managing director and directors for its equities business globally in 2017.
Barclays has continued hiring for its equities business this year, adding eight managing directors and directors in the year to date. Earlier this month, Dainton hired former Credit Suisse colleague Matt Pecot to run Asia Pacific equities. In Europe, Barclays hired Emmanuel Cau, a senior global and European strategist from J.P. Morgan. In the U.S.(outside the immediate range of MiFID II), Barclays has been building its equity research team. In the first quarter of 2018 it recruited David Strauss, an aerospace analyst from UBS, Steve Valiquette, a healthcare analyst from BAML, Julian Mitchell, an industrials analyst from Credit Suisse, and Eric Beaumont, a power and utilities analyst who previously worked for Barclays but quit for a year to work in business development for American Water.
Equities professionals cut from Barclays could always join former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond at Panmure Gordon. Panmure Gordon plans to double its headcount in London and hired Bill Dale, a former equity research head from Nomura, to expand its research offering in April. Macquarie and Berenberg are also hiring.
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