Senior rates traders are leaving investment banks

At least two senior rate traders have left banks in the past month.

Farzad Kassam, the former co-head of GBP rates trading at NatWest Markets, whose exit we reported last month, has resurfaced at the New York-based hedge fund Millennium Management.

Kassam, one of the few gilt-edged market maker (GEMM) traders in London has now joined Millennium Management's London office as a portfolio manager, where he's likely to build a team.

Before joining NatWest in the middle of last year, Kassam spent over seven and a half years at RBS.

Another rates trader to leave banking is Goldman Sachs managing director Scott Rofey. Rofey recently left Goldman after 16 years according to his LinkedIn profile. He joined the firm in 2003 after working six years at JP Morgan Chase and was one of three people to succeed Kostas Pantazopoulos as head of rates trading in 2017,

Based in New York, Rofey is yet to take up another role. 

Rate desks are turning out a bad place to be for bankers in 2019. According to data published by banking intelligence provider Coalition, G10 rates trading revenues fell 12% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019. 

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