Credit Suisse lost a top quant, a year after giving him a big promotion

Promotions don't seem to count for as much as they used to in investment banks. Managing directors promoted last November have been leaving Goldman Sachs, and now one of Credit Suisse's top equity derivatives structurers in Europe says he's resigned after receiving a big promotion a year ago.

Walter Cegarra says he resigned from Credit Suisse sometime in the past week. He worked for the bank for nine years after joining from Lehman Brothers in 2009. Cegarra didn't respond to an inquiry about his exit.

Cegarra was promoted to MD at Credit Suisse in 2012 when he was head of EMEA product management origination for flow-linked products. In May 2017, he was promoted again to global head of quantitative investment strategies (QIS) structuring within Credit Suisse's investment banking global markets solutions business. As such, he was responsible for all the Swiss bank's cross-asset dynamic investment strategies, including fund derivatives, algos and quantitative investment strategies.

It's not clear what Cegarra intends to do next, but his exit comes at a time when various banks are building both their equity derivatives and algo trading teams. Morgan Stanley, for example, poached two of Deutsche Bank's most senior London equity derivatives professionals in June.

Credit Suisse has been building out its equity derivatives team under global head of equities Mike Stewart. In May, the bank appointed Anthony Abenante, whom it hired from KCG in 2017, as head of a new execution services unit combining program trading and electronic trading. CS has also suffered big losses from its equities team, though: Nas Al-khudairi, the popular head of electronic products, left in September 2017 and is now building the electronic equities business at Barclays.

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