RBC Capital Markets pinched Morgan Stanley's top quant

Quants are taking over the world. While traders lose their lunch, quanty-stratty types are coming out of their IDEs and into the multiverse. Watch Marty Chavez go at Goldman Sachs. Watch Elisha Wiesel coming up behind him. Quants are the new rock stars; accordingly, RBC Capital Markets has just poached itself a good one ahead of bonus time.

The quant in question is Mike Sternberg. Until earlier this month, Sternberg was a Morgan Stanley managing director and co-head of Morgan Stanley's global sales and trading strats group in London. Now he's turned up as global head of quantitative analytics at RBC Capital Markets in New York. Seamless.

Sternberg's exit before bonuses are actually paid at Morgan Stanley suggests he's either been offered a healthy sign-on by RBC or a benign exit from MS. Having worked for Morgan Stanley since 1995, he's unlikely to have come cheap. He also likely had some costly deferred bonuses to be bought out from previous years.

Sternberg's exit follows the departure of other top quants from Morgan Stanley, including Jon Hill who recently left for Credit Suisse. It  leaves Christine Murphy as the sole head of strats at Morgan Stanley. Sternberg's arrival at RBC suggests the Canadian bank wants to improve its risk pricing capabilities along with the rest of the market. Deutsche Bank poached Goldman Sachs' top strat back in 2014 and today boasted how the system he's developed is revolutionizing the sales and trading business. 

Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com