Bank of America the latest to retool its equity derivatives business

You can now add Bank of America to the long list of firms that are growing their equity derivatives business. Bofa just poached veteran banker Henri-Emmanuel Lewinger from BNP Paribas. He started earlier this month in New York as a managing director.

The move comes as no surprise considering the current landscape where clients are seeking to hedge against volatile equities markets. Banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays have been hiring senior-level equity derivatives traders all year, though in Goldman’s case, the additions helped make up for higher-than-normal turnover within the unit.

Meanwhile, Bank of America was hit with a series of resignations within its global equity derivatives business earlier this year. The flurry of departures was mostly in EMEA and reportedly resulted in the bank temporarily having no managing directors on its European equity derivatives trading desks. Now Bank of America is reloading, at least in the U.S. Lewinger’s defection from BNP may be particularly frustrating for the French bank as it too is said to be trying to expand its equity derivatives business. As with FX sales, hiring within equity derivatives trading seems more a game of musical chairs as banks continue to poach from each other.

Lewinger joins Bank of America after spending the last decade as a managing director at BNP in New York. He first cut his teeth at Societe Generale in Paris, according to LinkedIn.

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