Banks hire M&A specialists

A weekly snapshot of movements in the job market:

The M&A sector has been making waves. Alongside a flurry of hiring by London investment banking boutiques, there was plenty of poaching and plotting in US media M&A over the past week.

Blackstone, the US private equity house, set the tone by announcing it had poached Jill Greenthal. A prominent figure in US media banking, Greenthal was head of media M&A at CSFB.

Greenthal brings a strong relationship with Yahoo, the internet service provider. Her defection should boost Blackstone's efforts to increase its US M&A capabilities.

CSFB meanwhile hired three senior media bankers from Merrill Lynch, boosting its US team of managing directors in media and telecoms investment banking to seven.

The moves were part of a trend of high-level hiring in the media sector. In June CSFB poached Nick Bertolotti, former head of European media research at JP Morgan, to work in its London office.

Bertolotti was rumoured to have been offered a package totalling up to $4m (3.6m euros) in the first year.

Media and telecoms have been showing signs of life this year. In July, Yahoo bought Overture, a US internet search company, for $1.6 billion. In Europe, one of this year's biggest IPOs was the 2bn flotation of Yell, the UK telephone directories business.

London's boutiques were also in hiring mode last week. Arbuthnot, a private banking and investment banking specialist, recruited three new analysts, including one media specialist, to boost its coverage of companies worth 100m and below.

Arbuthnot also added three sales staff in preparation for a move to start broking small and mid-cap UK equities. This followed the appointment of three new board members in July.

Altium Capital, a rival corporate finance and securities boutique, added a new managing director last week to work in its investment banking division.

There were also signs of larger banks putting their houses in order in time for a possible resurgence in M&A. HSBC is reviewing its equities business, leading to the possible integration of its cash equities operation with its global markets and corporate finance business.

UBS said it is ditching its specialist M&A model, in which focused sector and country teams work on specific deals. In place, it will operate a generalist model with around 200 corporate financiers and 35 managing directors deployed as necessary.