Credit Suisse TMT MD jumps to Jefferies as recruitment war heats up

Jefferies has just hired Timothy Roepke, a seven-year veteran of Credit Suisse, where he was a Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) investment banking managing director in New York, a continuation of the recruitment tug of war between the two banks.

Roepke, who joined Credit Suisse from Barclays in 2010, has just moved to Jefferies as a managing director within its TMT team.

Turnabout is fair play, as they say: In April, Credit Suisse hired Brad Zelnick as a managing director focused on software equity research in New York after he had spent the previous three years in a similar role at Jefferies.

However, their recruitment feud goes further back than that.

Last year, Jefferies poached five MD-level technology investment bankers from Credit Suisse in the U.S. and tried to hire away eight more toward the end of 2016. In January, Credit Suisse tried to block the latter moves and succeeded in convincing three of the eight to stay in their roles. Then Jefferies went after the bankers personally for damages totaling $10m.

Jefferies has also been actively adding headcount in Europe, including former Barclays and Lehman Brothers banker Haroon Rahmathulla, who has joined as a managing director and the head of chemicals investment banking, and Juergen Schroeder, previously a director in corporate finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In addition, Jefferies recently opened an Amsterdam office.

Of course, other banks pull talent from Jefferies as well, including UBS, which last month hired Daniel Brierley, who spent the past six years in a senior trading role at Jefferies.

In May, Jefferies lost Tommaso Zanobini to Deutsche Bank, where he is now a managing director and the global head of financial technology, a joint venture between the FIG and TMT investment banking teams. Andrew Shortland was the head of international equities at Jefferies for the last eight years, but he left in March to start his own firm, Andrew Shortland Associates.

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