Standard Chartered is quietly emerging as one of the biggest banking recruiters of 2017

While most large investment banks are building their fixed income sales and trading divisions, Standard Chartered has emerged as a dark horse for senior hires in the second half of 2017.

It’s just brought in Jonathan Harding to lead its emerging markets institutional rates sales division in London. Harding, who has held various senior macro sales and trading roles across the City over the past 20 years, joined Standard Chartered from Nomura in October.

Harding spent the past four years at the Japanese bank as head of emerging markets macro sales, but left earlier this month for Standard Chartered. He joined Nomura in 2013 from Royal Bank of Scotland, where he was head of EMEA local markets sales. Before this, he was a managing director and head of emerging markets trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch between 2005-2011.

Standard Chartered has also brought in Mei Ling Lim from Nomura. She was previously a managing director and head of sales for South East Asia at the Japanese bank. She's now head of credit sales for Asia-Pacific at Standard Chartered in Singapore.

These are the the latest recruits in a rejuvenated markets business at Standard Chartered, which dumped 25% of its managing directors in 2015 shortly after new CEO Bill Winters arrived. Since hiring Roberto Hoornweg, a former partner at hedge fund Brevan Howard, as global head of financial markets in December 2016, Standard Chartered has been bringing in senior fixed income professionals. Hoornweg oversees capital markets, commodities, FX, rates and credit at Standard Chartered and has been instrumental in hiring some big names.

In September, it brought in Savady Yem, the former head of fixed income sales for Asia at Credit Suisse, as global head of private sales, based in Singapore. This follows the appointment of Jens Andersen and Molly Duffy as co-heads, financial markets in the Americas in July and named Matthew Hastings as global head of commodities in August, based out of London.

Despite generally poor results for most fixed income divisions in the third quarter, investment banks have continued to hire markets professionals.

Deutsche Bank said last week that it had hired 40 staff over the past 18 months across its credit sales and trading operations. Significant recruits include Paul Huchro, a former Goldman Sachs partner who joined as head of investment grade credit trading last week, as well as Cedric Lespiau, who came in as head of credit index and options trading from SocGen in May and Jeffrey Chang, who joined as co-head of high yield credit trading in New York.

Barclays hired Eric Childs, who was latterly a portfolio manager at Bluecrest Capital Management, as head of USD swaps trading earlier this month and also brought in Adam Glossop as a managing director on its rates trading team in New York in September. All these hires follow the appointment of Chris Leonard as head of U.S. rates trading in June. It’s also just named Guy Saidenberg, a former partner and head of sales strats and structuring at Goldman Sachs who retired in March last year, as global head of distribution. In all, Barclays has hired 21 managing directors globally this year, and two-thirds of them are in the markets business.

Goldman Sachs said in September that it was hiring for fixed income, as well as its strats and investment banking origination team in an attempt to turn its flagging trading operation around. Marty Chavez, Goldman’s chief financial officer, was peppered with questions from analysts about its hiring strategy in its Q3 earnings call yesterday, notably how it would be able to see through on its promises when so many European investment banks are bulking up. Chavez said that it had doubled the number of lateral hires in 2017 compared to last year, and that 80% of people who were given an offer accepted.

Contact for news, tips and comments: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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