Does this constitute an exodus from Barclays Capital yet?

Barclays Capital appears to be losing quite a lot of people.

This week, BofA Merrill has poached both David Woo, an MD in FX and interest rate research, and Abhinandan Deb, an analyst for equity-linked securities. Meanwhile, the head of prime brokerage sales, Brian Bisesi, went to JPMorgan.

Wood, Deb and Bisesi's departures wouldn't be huge news, were it not for the fact that they appear to be only the tip of an iceberg: headhunters say quite a few other people have left too.

These are rumoured to include two German interest rate sales people, one Benelux flow credit salesperson, another Italian salesperson, a UK corporate salesperson, plus Mark Baillie, a 'director in the risk solutions group', who appears to have left in April, and Carlos Gomez Solarzano, a

structurer, who appears to have left in May.. Both Baillie and Gomez Solarzano are rumoured to have gone to Merrill.

This all follows the departure of an Italian sales team and various other people last month.

Headhunters are reluctant to call it an 'exodus' however, pointing out that BarCap has also been hiring.

However, others suggest that there's a vein of dissatisfaction at BarCap due to a) modest bonuses last year, b) the suspicion that bonuses will be modest again next year, c) the suspicion that FICC will be made to subsidise the growing equities business, d) BarCap's reluctance to offer guarantees in order to buy its people back.