Jefferies has been poaching junior and mid-ranking bankers in London

As large investment banks hunker down after Brexit, it’s becoming increasingly clear that smaller firms are taking the opportunity to hire. Evercore is growing in London, and in recent weeks Jefferies has been bolstering its junior and mid-ranks - largely with people leaving bulge brackets.

Jefferies has been steadily hiring senior investment bankers throughout 2016, but since the Brexit vote it’s turned its attentions to those below managing director level.

Christoph “Topper” Siedentopf, who was a trading in Deutsche Banks’ equities team, has just joined Jefferies’ electronic and portfolio trading division. Kevin Kelly, who was a trader at Goldman Sachs, also joined earlier this month. Des Hernon, previously a director and equities trader at KCG in London, was hired into Jefferies’ equities trading team.

Jan Scherer, who was in healthcare specialist sales at UBS, has also just joined Jefferies in a similar role and Rina Endo, who was a vice president in fixed income sales at Mizhuo, has signed up too. Martin Hammerschmidt, who was an associate in Nomura’s now disbanded European equity research team, has joined Jefferies as an equity research associate focused on European telecoms.

In investment banking, Piyush Sanghai, who was previously a senior vice president at GMP Capital, joined Jefferies healthcare investment banking team.

Jefferies recent hiring exuberance hasn’t resulted in a swelling of its London headcount, however. In December last year, it had 415 people registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. As of October, it has 398 employees. In fact, since the beginning of 2016, 76 people have departed Jefferies, while 53 have joined.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com