Jobs roundup: Banks make senior M&A hires
As the year ends and bonus season approaches, hiring typically stutters to a halt. This did not prevent some firms making senior investment banking and fund management appointments last week.
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HSBC and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW) all added senior staff.
RBS poached David Bassett, from Citigroup, as its new global head of loan syndication. At Citigroup, Bassett was head of European loan distribution and trading.
Citigroup also lost out as HSBC added global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) sector heads to its revamped M&A team. Rupert Robson, formerly of Citigroup, joined HSBC as global co-head of the financial institutions group (FIG).
Anthony Bernbaum, formerly of Goldman Sachs, joined HSBC as head of its European insurance, corporate finance and advisory division.
HSBC is still planning to appoint a co-head of FIG, and is expected to make further hires to its pharmaceuticals and consumer teams.
DrKW continued to build its equity capital markets business, recruiting Christopher Airey, former chief executive of Old Mutual Securities, as a managing director. Airey will report to John St John who joined from Commerzbank in May with a brief to hire new staff.
There were also senior moves in Frankfurt. Deutsche Bank hired Dorothee Blessing, a former Goldman Sachs banker, to run a new financing group combining debt and equity platforms within its global corporate finance division.
UBS promoted Florian Lahnstein, a managing director in its media and technology group, to the position of co-head of German investment banking.
In fund management, multi-manager products continued to attract new recruits. Insight Investment, the fund management arm of HBOS, hired another two directors to its multi-manager operation.
Both came from Edinburgh Fund Managers, the former employer of Nigel Whittingham who left in March to head Insight's multi-manager business. Insight has been building its multi-management team ever since five members of its previous team were poached by Gartmore in August
Meanwhile, Mellon Global Investments hired Julie Dickson from Barclays Global Investors (BGI) to head its European transition team, which helps manage assets during periods of restructuring. It was the second transition appointment at Mellon since October.
