UBS pulls MD-level rates trader from Jefferies

With fixed income currencies and commodities recruitment picking up to pre-crisis heights on Wall Street, UBS is getting in on the rush for top rates traders. Daniel Brierley, who has spent the past six years in a senior trading role at Jefferies, has just joined UBS in New York.

Brierley was a managing director within Jefferies' rates trading business before joined UBS's rates trading division. He joined Jefferies as a senior vice president in 2011, when the U.S. bank was bolstering its 120-strong rates sales and trading business.

After graduating with a B.A. from Yale, Brierley got his start on the government trading team in the capital markets division at Credit Suisse in New York, where he ascended from analyst to associate to vice president and eventually rates-trading director over 12 years at the bank. From there, Brierley joined Jefferies as a senior VP on the U.S. rates-trading desk. After six and a half years, he earned a promotion to MD.

A recent survey by consultants Greenwich Associates, which spoke to 1,000 people at 500 institutions, suggested that banks are back on the fixed income hiring wagon. The top banks are hiring more people in FICC within the U.S. market than at any point since the financial crisis. While most banks are building their credit desks, rates sales and trading is also a growth area again with some key senior hires being given the go ahead.

Barclays, for example, hired Chris Leonard as managing director and head of U.S. rates trading from his own hedge fund, Arcem Capital, in June, and also brought in Robert Tzucker has just joined Barclays as head of USD inflation trading after just over three years in a similar role at BNP Paribas.

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