Goldman Sachs strats team hires from disbanded Morgan Stanley quant unit

An executive director in Morgan Stanley’s disbanded Quantitative Solutions and Innovations (QSI) division has been hired into Goldman Sachs’ strats team in London.

Ralf Donner, who worked in FX sales within Morgan Stanley’s QSI team, has just joined Goldman Sachs in a similar role. He had worked at Morgan Stanley since October 2008, and joined the QSI division at its establishment five years’ ago.

When Morgan Stanley decided to cut 25% of its fixed income currencies and commodities team in November last year, its high-regarded QSI team were targeted for redundancy.

Its head, Pete Eggleston, put his hand up for voluntary redundancy in January and has since gone on to start FX analytics firm BestX along with Oliver Jerome, Morgan Stanley’s head of FX and emerging markets EMEA trading, structuring and sales.

The QSI team was set up at Morgan Stanley around five years’ ago, and offers its clients a series of technological tools to help with FX execution. Its team was small, at around six people, but was particularly targeted during the banks’ restructure.

Goldman Sachs’ strats group is huge and central to the whole organisation. Marty Chavez, its CIO, was handed control of both technology and strats around a year ago and manages around 9,000 people across these functions. It covers the majority of asset classes and divisions across the bank.

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