U.S. Jobs' Roundup: French firms fill range of needs

French-owned institutions led the pack in what was a busy hiring week across the U.S.

BNP Paribas appointed John Sullivan as managing director in the syndication, trading & placement group. Previously with Barclays Capital, he heads a team focused on energy, power and commodities financing in the Americas. Other new hires at BNP: Adam Glucksman, previously with Pitney Bowes, as head of transaction development for the US leveraged finance group; Steve Parsons, formerly with Radian Guaranty, as head of analytics in the New York securitization team; Wendy Breuder from Banc One Capital Markets to deal with investment banking coverage of BNP¹s Midwestern clients, based in Chicago; and Curtis Price as an investment banking team leader, also from Banc One Capital Markets.

Calyon Americas, the corporate and investment bank of the Credit Agricole Group in New York, hired three executives from Bayerische Landesbank in New York to boost its real estate financing team. John A. Wain will be managing director and head of the group. Paul T. Ragusin and Daniel J. Reddy join as directors. On the West Coast, David P. Messing and Michael J. VanderLey also join the real estate finance team. Both were previously with Edgehill Capital Partners and will be based in Los Angeles. Caylon also hired Amy Trapp as managing director and head of the structuring team in loan syndication.

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the investment banking arm of Germany's Dresdner Bank, hired Don Meltzer, a 20-year veteran of Credit Suisse First Boston, to head its North American corporate finance business, based in New York.

RBC Capital Markets, the corporate and investment banking arm of Royal Bank of Canada, announced that Patrick Prendergast, Daniel White and Jeffrey Winaker have joined the firm as managing directors and co-heads of its convertible group. Prendergast joins from Thomas Weisel Partners and White and Winaker were most recently with Piper Jaffray. They will be based in RBC's San Francisco office.

JP Morgan Chase has hired Kenneth Landon as a vice president and G10 currency strategist. Landon, who was previously a senior currency strategist with Deutsche Bank in New York, will join JP Morgan's global currency and commodity research team. He will be based in New York.

Nomura Securities International has hired Peter Leonard in New York to head its agency pass-through mortgage-backed securities business and to trade 30-year mortgage bonds. Prior to joining Nomura, Leonard was the head of the pass-through mortgage group at Bank of America.

Barclays Capital has hired John Finigan as a managing director and head of product development in the firm's collateralised finance business, based in New York. He joins from AIG Trading.

Kelmoore Investment Company, the Palo Alto based broker/dealer hired Antoine Devine as chief compliance officer, Jeffrey Shaw as director of performance measurement and Catherine Wooledge as general counsel. Devine joins from law firm Foley & Lardner and Wooledge from Sutherland Asbil & Brennan.

Northern Trust Global Advisors, an investment management subsidiary of Northern Trust Corporation, announced the appointment of Heidi J. Levin to vice president in the private equity group, based in Chicago. Levin was previously with private equity firm Comdisco.

40/86 Advisors, a Carmel, Indiana-based fixed-income asset manager and investment advisor, announced two new hires for its investment team: David J. Miller as vice president and portfolio manager of the insurance group; and David Polson, assistant vice president and research analyst covering the banking & finance and insurance sectors. Miller joins from Lincoln National Corporation and Polson from Credit Suisse First Boston.

Venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners announced that Dinesh Vaswani has joined its office in Menlo Park, California, as an entrepreneur-in-residence. He was previously with Walden International. Vaswani will evaluate investment opportunities in U.S.-India cross-border firms.

Wilmington Trust, a leading wealth management firm, made several major additions to its investment management group. The company appointed Robert M. Balentine to head the group. Prior to assuming this new role, Mr. Balentine led Balentine & Company, Wilmington Trust's Atlanta-based investment counseling firm. In addition the firm hired Neil Wolfson as chief investment officer, Rex Macey as head of equity management, and Samuel Fraundorf as director of manager research. All three new hires join from KPMG LLP.