Former Deutsche Bank equities trader pops up at Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs’ equity derivatives trading business has undergone a bit of a facelift over the last few months, with the division losing several high-profile names while also making a number of new hires. The most recent addition is Guillaume Gnech, a former director within Deutsche Bank’s equity derivatives trading unit in London. He joined Goldman in July as a single stock exotic trader.

The hire underscores frenetic changes that are occurring in equity derivatives at both firms. Deutsche Bank has been taking a knife to its equity trading business under new CEO Christian Sewing, though most of the equities cuts have come in the U.S. Gnech left Deutsche Bank in April, before Sewing announced a strategic overhaul that included roughly 7,000 global job cuts.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has seen a lot of recent turnover within its equity derivatives business, particularly in Europe. Nick Laux, the London-based head of single stocks derivatives trading at Goldman who made MD in 2017, reportedly exited the bank earlier this year. Laux presumably would have been Gnech’s new boss.

Several other high-profile equity derivatives traders in London have left the bank this summer, including executive directors Francesco Taglietti and James Spooner in May. At least three other departures took place in June in EMEA, including a fellow exotic stock trader, with insiders saying there was some disgruntlement over politics and pay. Part of the reason for the complaints was apparently due to the fact that Goldman has been hiring within equity derivatives, and that new recruits were given better pay packages than the old guard, sources said at the time.

Gnech, who earned his master’s degree in mathematics from NYU, spent the first five years of his career as a trader at Barclays in New York before a one-year stint as a portfolio manager at Capstone Investment Advisors, according to LinkedIn. He relocated to London to take the job at Deutsche Bank.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: btuttle@efinancialcareers.com

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t).