Equity salesman who left BAML joins Berenberg

Stuart Holt, a former director of equity sales at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), has joined the London office of Berenberg Bank.

Holt, who has more than 10 years of experience, arrived at the German firm this month after leaving BAML last year. He started his career with Credit Suisse in equity sales in 2007 and moved on to Sanford Bernstein as head of hedge fund sales four years later. After spending three years at Sanford, he joined BAML in 2014.

Berenberg, a partnership 30% owned by the Berenberg family, pays bonuses in cash in the UK. But this privilege comes with a catch. Because the bank only pays cash and doesn’t have restricted stock bonuses as a retention mechanism, it operates a clawback. If you leave Berenberg within six months of receiving the bonus, you will have to pay it back in its entirety, including tax. This is similar to what happens at Jefferies, only less punitive.

Berenberg employs about 300 people in London across equities and corporate finance and has been growing in both the UK and the US, where it increased headcount by nearly 50% last year to close to 50 people.

Meanwhile, BAML, one of the solid performers in 2017, let go at least 10 people across its markets and investment banking teams in London last September as a part of its pre-bonus cost cutting.The cuts in London also came after BAML announced its leadership team for its new post-Brexit banking and global markets hub based in Dublin, where it is already in the process of expanding its Irish headcount.

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