BNP Paribas has hired Deutsche Bank's head of inflation trading

BNP Paribas is on a roll, and has continued its recruitment of senior traders by bringing in Stephane Salas, the head of inflation trading at Deutsche Bank in London, as its new head of inflation trading for Europe and the UK.

Salas, who joined Deutsche Bank to co-head of inflation trading from Societe Generale in 2011 alongside Paul Canty, has left the German bank to head European and UK inflation trading at BNP Paribas. Salas started out at SocGen in 1996 after graduating with a Masters degree in Finance from Cambridge University. When he left in 2011 he was global head of inflation trading based out of Paris.

Suffice to say, in normal circumstances, hiring a trading MD at this point in the year would be a costly exercise involving buying out bonuses. However, investment banks across the City have signed off on senior rates hires. Rates has been the big hiring story of the second half in London - even though revenues continued to disappoint so far in the first half across fixed income and J.P. Morgan is anticipating that fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) revenues will be down by 25% in the third quarter. Banks are either replacing senior hires or building in anticipation of longer term revenues as the Federal Reserve’s move to raise rates and (likely) reduce its balance sheet could produce some much needed volatility in the market.

Deutsche Bank has had some troubles in its fixed income division, with revenues down 12% in the second quarter and the bank taking a reported $60m hit thanks to a bad bet by its inflation traders in the U.S. Salas was therefore in a seemingly precarious position as head of the division, but Jacob Bourne, the head of U.S. inflation trading who joined from Scotiabank in October last year, departed in July.

Despite fears of over-hiring, Deutsche Bank has been building its rates business regardless - it poached from BNP Paribas, bringing in Greg Slawsky, a director-level rates salesman to join its team in New York City and Eric Zijdenbos, who rejoined Deutsche as a managing director in rates sales in London. The French bank also lost Robert Tzucker, who joined Barclays as head of USD inflation trading in June.

BNP Paribas also hired Robert Boeheim and Eusta Qin, a former Goldman sterling corporate bond trader and investment grade financials trader respectively, in June and has also been building its emerging markets credit trading business this year.

BNP Paribas said that it was hiring for its corporate and investment bank again, but its fixed income division doesn't seem the obvious place to build after a 16% drop in revenues in the second quarter. Its equity and prime services division was up by 25.7% in Q2, and it's been hiring here. Matthew Clark, a former global head of client executives at Citigroup’s run prime broking sales and it  also promoted equity derivatives trader Jerome Bassot to global head of prime trading.

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

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