HSBC said to have dismissed technology team

Headhunters say HSBC, the UK bank which has spent the last several years trying to build an investment banking business, has dismissed members of its technology corporate finance team in London.

John Jacobs, who joined HSBC as a managing director and head of European technology investment banking from Credit Suisse First Boston in March 2004, is said to be leaving the firm, along with several juniors, according to a search consultant close to the matter.

The alleged move follows last week's news that John Studzinski, HSBC's head of investment banking and the man hired to drive its push into investment banking, is being moved internally to become an advisor to the chairman elect.

HSBC declined to comment on personnel matters. Jacobs is still listed on the FSA register and the HSBC phone directory.

Headhunters say additional staff are likely to voluntarily exit the bank once bonuses have been paid in March. For many of those hired in 2002 and 2003, this will be the last year they receive a guaranteed bonus, raising the prospect of moving for a better offer elsewhere.

"Headhunters will be all over HSBC in the next few weeks," says the head of one London search firm. "There is clear discontent and the view internally is that the commitment to the market has become equivocal."

A rival search consultant questions the marketability of HSBC's corporate financiers, however. "At the junior end these guys haven't done a huge number of deals, and at the senior end, you could argue they haven't been particularly successful in building the HSBC platform," she says.

Other potential sources of corporate finance staff leakage are said to include Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Cazenove. "The view at Morgan Stanley is that chief executive John Mack is building a capital markets firm and doesn't have an advisory strategy," says one search consultant.

Corporate financiers at JPMorgan are apparently discontented after their cousins at the joint venture JPMorgan Cazenove were better remunerated in the last bonus round. "Heritage bankers at JPMorgan are starting to test the water and headhunters are circling," says the search consultant.