Jobs roundup: More fixed income hiring

Job moves during the first working week of 2004 bore an uncanny resemblance to job moves during most weeks of 2003: fixed income hiring was in the ascendant. In the continuation of another trend from last year, two banks also recruited former senior civil servants.

HSBC Securities (USA) hired Mike Normile from Merrill Lynch as head of term asset-backed debt for the Americas. Normile, a veteran bonds banker, is expected to spearhead growth of HSBC's US debt franchise.

CSFB hired Bill White from Morgan Stanley as co-head of debt capital markets. White was head of North American debt origination at Morgan Stanley.

In the UK, Commerzbank hired two research analysts in London for its structured debt business and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein hired Carlyle Peake, a financial advisor in the Merrill Lynch private client group, as head of its emerging market debt syndicate.

The Options Group, a US headhunting firm, said 2003 fixed-income bonuses at Wall Street banks could end up double the size of 2002, with banks such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch each having an extra $200m for star traders.

Former civil servants remained in demand. Last year central bankers were all the rage, with Sir Eddie George, former governor of the Bank of England, and Hans Tietmeyer, former president of the German Bundesbank, moving to NM Rothschild and Lazard respectively. This time it was regulators and a US Treasury official.

Morgan Stanley said Sir Howard Davies, former chairman and chief executive of the UK Financial Services Authority, is to become a non-executive director subject to shareholder backing at the annual April stockholders' meeting.

BlackRock, a US fund management firm, hired Peter Fisher, a former number two at the US Treasury, to help expand its advisory services business

There was also a return to last year's trends for staff at Instinet, the agency broker which is 63% owned by Reuters. The company announced it was cutting 185 jobs, or 15% of its workforce in an effort to save $30m. The redundancies come after Instinet cut 175 jobs between the fourth quarter of 2002 and the third quarter of 2003.

US job moves last week included the departure of Steve Galbraith, head of US strategy at Morgan Stanley. Galbraith is to be replaced by Henry McVey, the bank's senior banking and fund management analyst.

Fox Pitt Kelton, the US corporate finance boutique, hired William Johns to head its corporate finance business. Johns joined from W Johns Associates, his own insurance consultancy.

As well as picking up Sir Howard Davies from the UK, Morgan Stanley appointed Klaus Zumwinkel, chairman of Deutsche Post, to its board of directors.

Lehman made Roger Nagioff, its co-head of global equities, chief operating officer at Lehman Brothers Europe