Barclays nabs Credit Suisse markets tech head before the holidays

Barclays has poached a high-ranking technology lead from Credit Suisse just before the end of the year. Chris Wells, a former managing director of global markets technology at Credit Suisse, started at Barclays in December in New York as an MD heading up its macro technology team.

The move comes a year after Barclays brought over Michael Lublinsky from hedge fund Brevan Howard to lead the UK bank’s macro trading business in New York. Barclays has been extremely active this year, making 275 external hires to its markets business between January and September 2018. The bank’s big focus now is electronic trading and digitalization.

Wells had been at Credit Suisse since 2015, before which he spent almost a decade at Goldman Sachs in various trading technology roles. He made managing director as the global head of interest rates products technology in 2011, according to LinkedIn. He cut his teeth at Deutsche Bank before a short stint at Citadel. He has his master’s in economics and finance from the University of Bristol. Wells is the latest example of banks making big-name hires at the tail end of the year – something that was rare in years past as firms tended to wait out bonus schedules. There seems no time for that now, particularly in technology.

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