Tuesday, August 11, 2009

UBS Names Senior Hires To Rebuild FICC

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UBS (UBS) has made over 20 senior hires to its embattled fixed-income, currencies and commodities division, led by the former European co-head of FICC at Merrill Lynch, in one of the most emphatic signs yet of the Swiss investment bank's commitment to rebuilding its trading and sales team and recapturing profits.

In an internal memo to staff, Carsten Kengeter and Jeff Mayer, global co-heads of FICC, said the series of hires have been made globally across four core FICC areas - macro, credit, emerging markets and distribution - with the most senior being that of Dimitri Psyllidis, who has been appointed global head of macro group in London.

Psyllidis, one of Europe's top fixed-income salesmen, co-ran Merrill Lynch's European FICC business and was a member of its European executive management committee before he left the US bank last year.

At UBS, Psyllidis reports to Kengeter and Mayer and is responsible for all foreign exchange and interest rate trading globally. He also joins the FICC executive committee.

The memo added that Bobby Gerjarusak had joined UBS in Hong Kong from Goldman Sachs to head FICC structuring in Asia Pacific.

Gerjarusak would have worked with Kengeter at Goldman Sachs (GS) in Asia, where he was a partner and co-head of the bank's Asian securities division before joining UBS last year.

In credit, and following the joining of Rajeev Misra - former global head of credit trading at Deutsche Bank (DB) - last month as head of credit within FICC, UBS said it has hired Anatoly Nakum as head of investment grade trading from Barclays Capital; Dan Brereton as head high-yield trading from BNP Paribas (BNP.FR); Nahil Bayrasli from Barclays Capital as a flow credit default swap trader; Jeff Cahoon from Deutsche Bank to trade telecom credit; and Todd Corsair, previously from Bear Stearns, as a credit analyst.

All five join UBS in Stamford, Conn., and report to Sean Dowd, head of flow credit sales and trading in the U.S.

In emerging markets, UBS said Misra and Ritesh Dutta have become co-heads of the business, which it intends to grow further, and that it has hired Jim Lanzilotti from hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors as head of Latin American foreign exchange and interest rates, to be partnered by Drew Dragoumis as head Latin American credit and sovereign trading.

In addition, Allan Grauer is joining UBS as a senior Latin American sovereigns trader from StormHarbour, the bond broker founded this year by former Citigroup alumni, and Ashish Vaidya joins form Indian bank HDFC Bank as head of FICC trading in Mumbai.

Also in Asia, UBS said it had hired Andreas Fugman from JP Morgan in emerging market structured interest rates; Anthony Chuah from Standard Chartered in emerging market interest rates trading; Daniel Brader from Dresdner Bank in emerging market FX option trading; and Siddarth Mathur has joined from JP Morgan as emerging market interest rates strategist.

In Zurich, Kai Herbert joins from Nomura as an FX trader.

Within FICC distribution, UBS said it has hired Andrew Crowston and Pablo Terpolilli from Goldman Sachs in London to work across leveraged finance sales, and that Steve Murphy has joined from Deutsche Bank to run UBS' U.K. rates real money clients.

Furthermore, Oliver Chappell joins from Morgan Stanley (MS) as co-head of FICC, Germany, based in Frankfurt, and Mark Fox, who had previously moved over to UBS wealth management, returns to run emerging market distribution for the EMEA region in London.

In Asia, Jerry Ifill joins from Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong covering hedge funds for the macro group; Karen Lo joins from Deutsche Asset Management in Hong Kong and covers institutional clients; and Rei Kawasaki joins from Morgan Stanley covering institutional clients in Japan. UBS has also made a hire on this side in its Stamford office.

Chris DeMarco, previously at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, joins as a senior client relationship director for hedge funds.

In the memo, Kengeter and Mayer said: "Our strategic goal is to become a leading FICC franchise as measured by profitability, client ranking and market share. These changes and appointments, along with others that will follow, represent a key step along the road to achieving this goal."

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