Veteran equity derivatives trader resigns from UBS mid-lockdown
The City of London may be in lockdown, but people are still swapping jobs - just. UBS's head of flow equity derivatives trading is understood to be among them.
Derek Laws is understood to have handed in his resignation at UBS in the past few weeks. It's thought that he has a new job lined up and is joining Cyrille Walters at Bank of America later this summer.
UBS declined to comment and BofA didn't confirm the move.
Some flow equity derivatives desks had a bumper first quarter: at JPMorgan, equity derivative trading revenues were up 100% year-on-year in Q1 and at Citi equity derivative trading revenues were understood to rise by $500m. French banks like SocGen and BNP Paribas made substantial losses on their own equity derivative desks in Q1, though, after losing money on dividend futures.
Despite the strong first quarter, equity derivatives headhunters said there's not that much going on. "There are dribs and drabs, people are carrying on with recruitment but without much determination," said one. Laws seems to be going against the grain.
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