Barclays is hiring in equities after clearing out MDs

Barclays may be cutting hundreds of managing directors in its investment bank before bonuses are announced, but this isn't preventing the British bank from hiring selective new people too.

One of Barclays' latest recruits in London is Robert Dale, who joined this month in equity derivative and cross-asset sales after a long and storied career in the City.

Dale joined Barclays after a very brief spell at fintech firm, Halo Investing Inc. His LinkedIn profile says he joined Halo as head of distribution in September 2019 and left only five months later. Dale's banking career began at Citi in 2001 and has included spells at Lehman Brothers, Nomura and Credit Suisse, typically in a head of sales role. At Barclays he appears to be one of the team.

As we reported last week, Barclays' most recent round of redundancies appears to be skewed towards long-serving managing directors in the equities division. However, Barclays remains committed to the equities business. In October 2019, Barclays CEO Jes Staley said the bank had no intention of pulling back from equities sales and trading, and that Barclays 'liked' the franchise it had. Recent layoffs suggest it's simply agnostic about some of its most expensive staff.

Dale isn't Barclays' only new senior recruit. This month, it also hired former Goldman Sachs banker Christian De Haaij for its Paris investment banking business. At the same time, however, some longserving Barclays MDs have already found new roles at other banks. Matteo Ferrario, a former London-based MD who spent 14 years at Barclays in a variety of roles, including head of EMEA solutions sales, just joined MUFG as head of public and private side distribution in EMEA.

Barclays hired large numbers of MDs to its investment bank under Tim Throsby, the former head of the business who left in early 2019. Throsby hired 50 managing directors for the markets business and 33 for the banking business during the 19 months to October 2018.

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