Bold new career moves of ex-HSBC senior investment bankers

HSBC is ejecting senior investment bankers, and they’re not just going off and getting another banking job. Yes, some – like the former head of FIG Ben Leonard - might be going off to sell organic wine, but recent departures are also moving on to a different career path closer to their area of expertise.

One example is Carlos Garibaldi, the head of oil and gas advisory for Americas. He joined HSBC in August 2014, but has just left to join Colombian oil and gas firm Ecopetrol as head of its international new ventures and acquisitions business. This is a return to industry for Garibaldi, who has flitted between senior banking jobs and advisory roles in the oil and gas sector in Houston.

Then there’s Guillaume Marion, a senior financial institutions group investment banker in London, who’s just moved into fintech – in Canada. Marion is now the chief financial officer at Diagram Ventures, which has just 12 employees and describes itself as a ‘launchpad’ for fintech and insurtech start-ups.

Again, Marion joined HSBC in 2014, after completing a Masters in Finance degree from London Business School – one of the few courses post-experience masters courses. Before that he worked for a portfolio company at German fintech firm Rocket Internet.

Meanwhile, James Woodeson, head of multinationals in HSBC’s Swiss operation, left in April and has reinvented himself as an executive coach. Woodeson has been with HSBC his entire career, having joined as a graduate in 2002.

HSBC said in January that it was planning to cut 100 senior investment banking jobs globally, and managing directors have started to seep out of the bank throughout the course of 2017.

Recent departures include Ben Katz, a New York-based managing director – again in its financial institutions group – who left after nearly seven years at the bank. He switched from an MD role at Deutsche Bank in London in August 2010. Mijo Mirkovic, a senior vice president in currency trading, has also left the bank.

HSBC has been doing a bit of hiring, however. Christopher Denruyter, a former managing director in derivatives trading at Credit Suisse who lost his job in May last year as the Swiss bank rolled out its latest rounds of redundancies, has just joined HSBC’s QIS trading group. This is after just five months in business development at hedge fund Incipit Capital Partners.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com