J.P. Morgan has made another big hire for its $20 trillion custody business

Compared to other parts of its corporate and investment bank, J.P. Morgan’s global custody business doesn’t get a lot of attention. It’s huge – with $20 trillion in assets under custody – is growing and has been making some major hires.

The latest senior recruit is Richard Gordon, who joined in a newly created role of global head of custody and fund services operations last week. He has spent the previous four years working at Citi in London, where he was global head of securities services operations. Before this, Gordon worked at Deutsche Bank for 12 and a half years in various senior roles including chief operating officer for its risk division, head of risk operations and head of risk IT.

Typically, senior roles in custody are all about smoothing back office operations and making the whole thing more efficient. Gordon’s new role appears to be no exception.

In a memo sent last week by Lawrence Waller head of CIB Operations in EMEA and Teresa Heitsenrether, global head of custody & fund services announcing Gordon’s appointment, said that the hire was part of ensuring “operational excellence and efficiency” that were essential to the “ongoing growth of the business”.

This is the second major hire at J.P. Morgan’s custody business in London over the past few months. It brought in Mike Hughes, who was previously head of fund services at Deutsche Bank, as head of global custody in July.

Revenues in J.P. Morgan’s securities services business were up 6% year on year in the first half to $1.8bn. Competition has been heating up among global custodians over the past few months – earlier this year, BlackRock ditched States Street and moved $1 trillion in assets under custody across to J.P. Morgan.

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