European jobs roundup: Boutiques hire technology bankers
There were some notable hires in the technology sector in the past week.
Boutiques were the prime movers. Cobalt Corporate Finance, a London-based telecoms media and technology (TMT) firm, hired Paul Livers-Ratham, a former senior vice president at 3i in the US.
Ratham has 18 years experience in semi-conductors, computing and communications. At Cobalt he will be director of technology.
Amethyst Corporate finance, an advisory boutique, hired David Christie, a vice president in the TMT team at Citigroup. At the end of last year Amethyst hired Barry Hunter from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Tim Lebus from Duke Street Capital, the private equity firm.
Index Ventures, a European biotechnology venture capital fund, hired Kevin Johnson and Gianni Garotta as senior executives, from the biotech companies Cambridge Antiobody Technologies and Serono respectively. Ennio Ongini joins Index as an advisor and will retain his day job as head of discovery at Nicox, a pharmaceutical research company.
The moves coincided with a resurgence of activity in the biotech sector. Last week Credit Suisse First Boston completed the 55m flotation of Ark Therapeutics, the largest European IPO for three years. CSFB and Morgan Stanley said they will lead an IPO of the Swiss biotech company Basilia Pharmaceutica later this month.
Beyond the technology sector, there was also hiring in the high yield, derivatives and financial institutions group (FIG) areas. ABN Amro hired James Courtenay from CIBC World Markets to head its high yield and leveraged finance team. ABN Amro closed all its full time high yield positions in 2002 and Courtenay has a remit to rebuild the high yield franchise. The bank did not comment on potential further hires.
Lehman Brothers poached Jason Tilroe from Goldman Sachs to be European head of corporate and public sector derivatives.
Merrill Lynch Investment Managers hired Mark Elliott from Lazard for its FIG team. Elliott will work in the UK sales development group. HSBC hired Rod Prat, a managing director in the FIG group at Deutsche, as head of sales for Europe and the Middle East.
There were indications of where some banks may be hiring in future. CSFB moved Brady Dougan, its co-president, to London from New York in an effort to boost its profits outside the US. A source at the bank said Dougan aimed to expand the bank's international leveraged finance and commercial mortgage businesses.
Citigroup hired Josef Ritter from Deutsche Bank as head of German equity capital markets, in a drive to expand its German operations.
Meanwhile Deutsche Bank is understood to have cut about 50 equities staff in London as part of an annual cull. Redundancies are understood to have fallen mainly in cash equities.
