This small Japanese bank is making some trading big hires

This year, strangely, has turned into a summer of fixed income hiring, and there’s one small investment bank in London luring trading staff across from big players with the added bonus of a grand job title.

SMBC Nikko Securities, a subsidiary of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, has been making some big hires this year, bolstering both its London and New York office.

The latest recruit in London is James Asquith, a VP in credit trading at Deutsche Bank who also holds the auspicious accolade of being the youngest person ever to visit all 196 countries in the world. Asquith joined the Japanese bank earlier this month as an executive director, but also leads the bank’s corporate credit trading in London.

SMBC Nikko has around 120 employees in the UK, so it’s unlikely to be a huge desk that Asquith is heading up, but the bank has still been successful at capturing some senior markets staff from big name banks.

In New York, it’s also brought in Roger K. Horn as a senior emerging markets desk analyst within its fixed income sales and trading division. For the past five years, Horn has been working at $93bn investment manager MacKay Shields, as a senior emerging markets credit strategist. However, before this he was a managing director and head of credit research for the Americas at Societe Generale in New York.

SMBC Nikko also landed another senior hire in June. It brought in Isabel Mahoney,  Morgan Stanley's former head of financial credit trading in London, as its new head of fixed income sales and trading. Mahoney left Morgan Stanley in November 2015 as part of the swathing cuts in its fixed income division, and re-emerged at the Japanese bank 18 months later.

SMBC Nikko’s fixed income build out may be small, but it’s consistently landing new employees from bigger competitors. Another recent recruit is Tom Ordish, who was working as an associate in Goldman Sachs' fixed income division in Japan – he joined SMBC Nikko’s Japanese equity sales and trading team in London.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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