Jobs roundup: Bank of America hires in M&A

A weekly snapshot of movements in the job market:

There was some hiring but also plenty of firing at investment banks last week.

Bank of America strengthened its European investment banking franchise with three senior hires, including Alberto Piedra, former co-head of European banking in the financial institutions group at Goldman Sachs. More investment banking hires at Bank of America are widely expected.

Despite withdrawing from the European cash equities market earlier this year, Bank of America may be well placed to bulk up in M&A. Freeman & Co., a US consultancy, has said that Bank of America was the only bank to increase its M&A fees between the first half of 2002 and the first half of 2003.

The picture at HSBC last week was mixed. It emerged that the bank is set to cut 30 staff from its London coporate finance team and 10 from project finance, but it is also understood to be planning to bring in new blood in the coming months.

The layoffs were widely seen as evidence that John Studzinski, the former head of European investment banking at Morgan Stanley, and Stuart Gulliver, former head of global markets at HSBC, were stamping their authority on the bank's corporate, investment banking, and global markets division.

Meanwhile new estimates from Dealogic, the market information company, suggested that M&A fee income had fallen 20% in Europe so far this year.

Recruiting was also in evidence in equities.

Deutsche Bank signalled its intention to boost its presence in US equities. It reorganised the senior management of its US equity capital markets (ECM) business, and indicated that it planned to hire as many as 10 bankers into US ECM in months to come.

At the same time, there were hires in equity fund management. Legal & General Investment Management made two hires to its equity team to boost its activities in high margin active products.

Putnam Investments, the US fund manager, appointed a new director of European equities.

However, the story from equity fund management was not entirely one-way. Patrick Degorce, a senior European equity fund manager, followed the example set by three of his equities colleagues last month by leaving Merrill Lynch Investment Management (MLIM) for a new hedge fund.