Nomura quietly hired itself a new head of swaps trading

Nomura has quietly brought hired a former Credit Suisse managing director as its new head of swaps trading.

Arif Merali joined Nomura in September as a managing director in charge of GBP swaps trading for the Japanese bank.

Before joining Nomura, Merali spent 15 and a half years at Credit Suisse. Prior to that, he was a vice president at Mizuho Capital Markets Corp., where he began his career in 1995 and stayed for seven and a half years.

Nomura's new hire comes as the Japanese has been hiring new traders after eliminating 50 of its existing traders back in June and July. The exits included Nick Oxlade (head of European credit sales) and Manolo Pedrini (head of European rates sales).

We were the first to report in July that Nomura was also hiring. In October, Bloomberg reported that Steve Ashley, who runs global trading at Nomura, wanted to 'replace senior staff and change the leadership in London.' Ashley has been expanding a whole new business called Client Financing and Solutions (CFS) which creates structured credit products for clients. He is reportedly chasing a 25% increase in credit revenues under the new structure.

Ashley himself is a rates trader by profession and Merali is not his only hire. He has also has recruited some of his former RBS colleagues, including James Konrad, Biagio Lapolla and Robbie Anderson for flow rates trading.

Fred Jallot, Nomura's former head of emerging markets for EMEA, recently signed a contract to join Jefferies.

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