The bonfire of the fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) sales and trading teams has begun. And it’s not only the obvious banks (Barclays) who are have been losing people. As Bloomberg reported last week, Morgan Stanley has been slimming down. So has Goldman Sachs.
Not all last week’s exits were forced. We understand that some people have been leaving voluntarily and that people at Barclays in particular have been taking advantage of voluntary redundancy packages (the terms of which have not yet been confirmed) and of offers to shift to new positions in the bank.
So, who’s departed? At Goldman Sachs we understand that Manolo Pedrini, a Benelux rates salesman who was promoted to managing director in 2012, left. So too did Ajit (AJ) Sarpal, who joined Goldman from Lloyds in June 2013. Goldman hasn’t confirmed either exit, but Pedrini is no longer on Goldman’s system and a colleague of Sarpal’s confirmed his departure.
Barclays’ departures are less certain. Peter DeClercq, country head of solutions sales to Benelux and Luxembourg, Paolo Sardella, a member of the Italian solutions team, Michele Campus, head of investor solutions for Italy and Nicola Colavito, a managing director in Italian distribution, are said to have left the bank – in some cases voluntarily. However, Barclays was unable to confirm their departures and colleagues said they were currently out of office and expected to return. Last week Bloomberg reported that Barclays MDs Iskandar Vanblarcum, Christian Ahrling and Christophe Gioffredo were let go from Northern European rates sales, Scandinavian rates sales and French FX sales jobs respectively.
Morgan Stanley’s exits are said to have been comparatively light. Max Meng, a junior rates trader in London is said to have left. Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Meng was not at his desk when we called.
One headhunter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said banks are consolidating pan-European sales teams and now have fewer people covering small markets like Benelux and Scandinavia. “We’re going back to the 1980s when you just had a few people working on a lot of countries,” he said. Barclays has stated specifically that it intends to focus on the U.S. and the U.K. alone.
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