Eyebrows raised as Deutsche Bank hires another out of work banker
Deutsche Bank is hiring. As we reported yesterday, the German bank has recruited numerous fixed income traders in the past few months and there are several more big equities hires in the pipeline. However, eyebrows are being raised inside Deutsche at the fact that many of the bank's recent hires were out of the market before they joined.
The latest to fit this description is Mark Lewellen, who is is understood to be joining DB as the corporate debt capital markets head in London, replacing Conor Hennerbry, who quit for Santander in October 2018. Lewellen was put at risk by Barclays in November 2018 and has since been metaphorically tending his garden.
Lewellen isn't the only person DB has hired from the street. Olivier Gazzolo, who joined the investment grade credit team in London in November as a managing director had been out of the market for 19 months after leaving SocGen.
Some DB insiders complain that the talent pool is being diluted. "A lot of the people we're hiring were on the beach and therefore realllly cheap to hire," says one.
Deutsche Bank didn't respond to a request to comment for this article. However, several of the firm's recent hires were actually plucked from rival banks. DB is understood to have hired Manav Gupta, the former head of Goldman's credit flow trading business and Gupta remains registered with GS in New York. It's also recruited high yield trader Bret Corrigan directly from Nomura (albeit just before Nomura seriously slimmed down its US credit trading business) and Drew Meaney directly from Cantor.
Nonetheless, it's easy to see why hiring from the street might seem a good idea as Deutsche aims to both increase revenues and cut costs in 2019.
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