Deutsche Bank still hiring in the face of (apparent) impending doom as staff quit

Forget, for a moment, the threat that 50% of jobs in the investment bank will be cut in the next year: Deutsche Bank is still recruiting. And it's also, allegedly, recruiting for areas that were cut only recently.

In what seems to be a case of unfortunate timing, Deutsche Bank says that 158 students have just turned up for their nine-week summer internships at the bank. Sometime around week three, they should find out whether the business they were thinking of joining will still exist in July 2020. 

Meanwhile, and as per our suggestion in May that there was a Nomura-to-Deutsche trade going on, it seems that DB has been plucking people from the shrinking Japanese bank. Alex Braun and Shyle Nathvani are understood to be joining from Nomura in EM rates. Arun Subramanian is joining from Nomura in EM credit. Shahzad Amir joined as a director in EM credit from Mizuho. 

It's not clear the extent to which fixed income sales and trading jobs will be impacted by Christian Sewing's suggested cuts, but if 20k jobs are to go, Deutsche will need to cut beyond the seemingly-doomed cash equities business. 

Insiders suggest that some of the recent emerging market hires are to replace people who've left. Even before Friday's revelation, Deutsche was suffering from a stream of exits. Emerging markets traders Vivek Mittal and Vikramdeep Gill recently left DB after each working there less than two and a half years. And two DB emerging markets rates traders (Pallav Vasa and Serge Herzberg) are understood to be joining Citi. 

Curiously, Deutsche is also rumoured to be hiring U.S. dollar rates traders in London with a view to moving them to New York. This comes after Deutsche seriously slimmed its U.S. rates business only last year. "They over-cut," claims one recruiter. 

Deutsche Bank equities staff are preemptively leaving

In equities, meanwhile, staff are not only said to be packing boxes but leaving of their own accords. 

Insiders said two senior strats have left in the past few weeks. Miguel Barrio, a New York-based managing director and global head of equity strats is understood to have resigned along with Stuart Adamson, head of quantitative investment strategies strats. 

Antranik Kasparian, a strat and head of equities product development, is also said to be leaving. The destinations of all three men are unclear.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the moves. One insider described the suggestions that thousands of jobs could go as "very sad." Another said some senior managers in equities trading are openly advising staff to look for new jobs and that people are spending more time job hunting and polishing their CVs than doing any work. 

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