European jobs roundup: Debt hires make the running

Fixed income hiring topped the bill in Europe last week. Société Générale meanwhile built up its equity research strength.

Lehman Brothers appointed Farshid Sadr-Hashemi as executive director and head of its European fixed income institutional client group. Sadr-Hashemi, who joins from ABN Amro, where he was European co-head of derivative marketing, will be responsible for selling bonds to fund managers across Europe.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) hired two people for the European covered bond market. They were Oliver Welzel, who joined from Barclays Capital in Frankfurt as a senior covered bond trader and Karsten Walprecht, who joined as a senior covered bond and municipal bond trader from DZ bank.

HVB Group hired Tom Currie from HBOS as a London-based vice president in leveraged debt. The bank is understood to be keen to add more bankers to its 11-strong London team.

Deutsche Bank reshuffled its debt team and made Hope Pascucci, head of debt capital markets and corporate coverage in Europe, head of its institutional client group. Pasucci, who is also global head of the bank's new issue debt syndicate, will add the new position to her existing titles.

ABN Amro hired five people for its high yield team. They included Vincent Gomez, Andrew Macmillan, and Claire Edwards, all from CIBC World Markets; they followed in the footsteps of James Courtenay, who moved from CIBC World Markets to ABN Amro three months ago as head of leveraged finance and high yield. The two other recruits were Dario de Greiff from French broker Aurel Leven and Justin Burley from Barclays Capital.

ABN Amro also hired three foreign exchange hedge fund salesmen for its London office. Mike Walsh joined from BNP Paribas, Ed Church joined from Barclays Capital and Tim Chapman joined from Deutsche Bank in New Zealand. Ezio Ceresa joined ABN Amro from Commerzbank in Milan to oversee FX and derivatives sales to Italian institutions.

Société Générale appointed four analysts to boost its coverage of European equities outside its domestic French market. Two of the hires, Leonardo Rubattu and Daryn Fletcher, came from Fox-Pitt, Kelton, a boutique that lost 20 equities staff in April.

Rubattu joins as head of banking sector research and a senior Italian analyst. Fletcher joins as an Italian banking analyst. The other hires were: Hans Zayed from BNP Paribas as a senior chemicals analyst and Alan Webborn from Kelton International, to cover French and Italian banks.

There was more hiring in corporate broking, which has been an actice sector in the past few weeks, as Merrill Lynch hired Mark Astaire from Hoare Govett for its corporate broking arm.

Merrill Lynch also appointed Simon Greenwell head of research for Europe, the Middle East and Africa after Rennie McConnochie left last week to join Bridgewell, the UK investment banking boutique.

Deutsche Bank promoted Tony Burgess to co-head of European mergers and acquisitions alongside Don Johnston. Burgess was co-head of Australian M&A at the bank and will relocate to London