J.P. Morgan now poaching equities juniors from rivals

With equities revenues increasing by anything from 25% to 38% at the biggest U.S. banks in the first quarter, equities hiring seems an inevitability this year. - And not just at the top end. Banks are bringing in juniors too.

J.P. Morgan, for example, has recently poached Dominik Storhas, a junior associate from Goldman Sachs' cross asset derivative sales team in London. Neither J.P. nor Storhas commented on the move, but Storhas is understood to be joining the team run by Alexander Kuebler, a former Goldman equity derivatives trader who arrived at J.P.M as an executive director in 2016. Kuebler spent 10 years at Goldman, of which two overlapped with Storhas.

Goldman has already been leaking equity derivatives traders. If Kuebler's building a team at J.P. Morgan, the likelihood is that he will tap GS again.

Kuebler isn't the only one hiring at J.P.M. Holli Dobay, a New York-based analyst in electronic execution services at Bank of America Merrill Lynch is understood to have quit for J.P. Morgan just 11 months into her banking career. Doblay is thought to be joining the team run by Nikki Acton, J.P.M's U.S. based global head of liquidity solutions. Like Kuebler, Acton is thought to be looking for more people. Other, potentially more senior, hires are expected to follow.

J.P. Morgan's willingness to pick up equities juniors comes after the bank successfully doubled its equities market share in the past decade after copying Morgan Stanley's strategy of focusing on electronic execution and prime broking. It also comes as junior (and senior) equities professionals at Deutsche Bank fear for their futures after new CEO Christian said the German bank's equities business is "under review." 

J.P.M is far from the only one hiring in equities this year: German-bank Berenberg is building its team in both London and New York and Macquarie is hiring in London.  At Credit Suisse, global head of equities Mike Stewart continues to build his team - frequently with former colleagues from BAML (the most recent joiner being Ross Mtangi, the ex-head of Americas index trading, who's coming on board as head of equity derivatives at the end of this month). Barclays is also bulking-out under Stephen Dainton, the global head of equities who joined from Credit Suisse last September and who most recently hired Neil Staff as global head of exotics trading at Credit Suisse...

While much of the publicly reported hiring has been senior, junior hiring will invariably follow. This looks like good news for any analysts and associates currently fretting at Deutsche.

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