Goldman Sachs has poached a new global head of distressed credit from Deutsche Bank
Goldman Sachs may be slowly letting people go in its New York office, as well as cutting in fixed income generally, but it’s also hiring when the right person comes along.
In the senior ranks, it has just hired Keith Braun from Deutsche Bank to head up its distressed credit risk management. He has taken the role of global head of distressed credit in New York and joins after more than 20 years working at Deutsche Bank.
Braun joined earlier this month, according to sources close to the situation, and comes to Goldman Sachs at a time when it’s slowly reducing headcount in New York and London – largely among senior fixed income professionals.
In May, Atosa Moini, a partner and co-head of credit sales at Goldman Sachs retired. Joseph Mauro, its head of fixed income currencies and commodities European hedge fund sales, also departed in June. Meanwhile, numerous sales and trading staff at managing director level departed when Goldman announced redundancies in March.
Goldman Sachs has also slowly been deflating headcount within its New York office. Only this week it unveiled that 15 jobs were to go in its Wall Street operation before the end of the year and this follows the announcement of 55 job losses in the city in July. Overall this year, Goldman Sachs has revealed 420 job losses in New York, predominantly in sales and trading.
However, Goldman also had a need to bolster its distressed credit functions, following a series senior exits over the past year. Jerry Keefe, the co-head of distressed debt trading left for hedge fund CarVal Investors last year. Ned Oakley, a managing director in distressed debt trading, left for Man Group. In March this year, Joe Femenia left to run distressed debt trading at Jefferies.
Despite this, Goldman said that the 20% year on year uplift in FICC revenues in the second quarter of 2016 was down to “significantly higher” revenues in both credit and currencies.
Braun has an MBA from the University of Denver.
