UBS and HSBC ride rates surge with new hires

UBS and HSBC have both made senior hires to their European rates desks in recent weeks.

UBS recruited Manjeet Gill, a former vice president in euro government bond trading from Deutsche Bank. Headhunters say Gill joined the Swiss bank as a director several weeks ago. Gill spent nearly three weeks at Deutsche, prior to which he spent 10 years at Goldman Sachs. Gill's arrival at UBS follows the Swiss bank's earlier recruitment of a team of rates professionals from Credit Suisse January, led by Adam Bryant (a move that went unreported at the time).

HSBC has also been hiring in rates. Last month, it picked up Ben Harvey, one of several senior rates sales professionals let go from Credit Suisse in April. Harvey joined HSBC as a director.

Rates and FX ('macro' desks) are two areas which are thought to have benefited most from high trading volumes in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union. J.P. Morgan's banking analysts predicted big growth in post-Brexit macro revenues in a note out late last month. However, they also predicted that any uplift is unlikely to last - the second half of 2016 is likely to be far quieter.

This might be why headhunters say there's been no real rush to bulk-up rates desks in the City of London. "This was just a random event - you had a crazy 24 hours and now it's lively but not that lively," says one, "There are very few jobs out there and a lot of guys are still on the market."

Credit Suisse's former macro team certainly doesn't seem to have been that successful in finding new roles. Although Harvey is now at HSBC, most of the seven people let go at the same time as him are still out of the market.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Andrea Orcel, CEO of UBS's investment bank, said the Swiss bank has stopped cutting headcount from its investment bank but that there will be no net hiring this year.

Photo credit: BraunS