Barclays is hiring senior investment bankers again

This time last year, if you worked for Barclays investment bank in a director or managing director it was a sweaty palm kind of phase. The bank was stripping out thousands of jobs and expensive senior employees, particularly those in markets functions, were hit hard.

Barclays is still reducing headcount, in fact job cuts have become more aggressive since former CEO Antony Jenkins announced plans to remove 19,000 roles. However, in recent weeks there are signs that the UK bank is open to hiring from its rivals once again and is bringing in senior sales and trading staff as well as investment bankers.

Drew Hendrickson, a former sales trader at boutique investment bank Liberum Capital, has joined Barclays as a director focused on sales of pan-European securities to US customers from London. Felix Schmid has signed up as a high yield trader from Citi and Chris Tyrer has rejoined the bank as director and head of European energy trading.

Meanwhile, former Goldman Sachs executive director, Aanand Venkatramanan, who was latterly director at boutique bank Suvarna Capital, has also joined as a director at Barclays and James Ankers, a director in group strategy at Deutsche Bank in Singapore, is now a director at Barclays.

Barclays may still be cutting, but at least it's starting hiring again.