Wells Fargo is all over Deutsche Bank’s unwanted traders

Two months on from Deutsche Bank’s harsh (but understandable) decision that its equities business sales and trading business wasn’t worth bothering with, several of its former NY equities employees have joined Wells Fargo Securities.

WF’s biggest ex-DB catch is David Murphy, Deutsche’s former co-head of U.S. equity sales and trading. Murphy quietly joined Wells’ Boston office in July, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Various others members of Deutsche’s U.S. equities team followed him, albeit not in Boston. Bran Banken, a former senior equities trader at Deutsche joined Wells Fargo’s Stamford office in August. Cormac McNaughton and Rob McEwan, formerly directors in equities sales trading and electronic trading respectively at Deutsche, joined the New York office in August. And Michael Turrin, a software researcher at DB, is said to be joining a similar team at WF soon.

The new hires come after Wells Fargo recruited Chip Clingham as head of U.S. execution sales last December. Wells Fargo doesn't break out reveues for its equities sales and trading business. However, revenues across fixed income and equities rose 14% year-on-year at the bank in the second quarter, even though the bank said gains from equities trading fell. Last May, Wells Fargo said it was hiring a "couple of hundred people" including 200 managing directors globally. At the time, it planned to focus on equity capital markets and M&A. 

Deutsche's unwanted equities traders are slowly resurfacing elsewhere. Insiders at the bank have argued that they are more able than rivals in the market because they always had to do more with less. 

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