Richard Kemmish, the former head of covered bond origination at Credit Suisse, was rare among senior investment bankers in that he had a Twitter account and used it for more than the occasional bought of marketing or personal brand management. This, it seems, was enough to fall foul of the bank’s compliance department and he was reportedly under investigation for improper use of social media at the time of his departure in February.
Kemmish has been working for large investment banks since 1992, when he joined JPMorgan’s DCM securitisation team. Twenty two years seems long enough – he’s just launched Richard Kemmish Consulting, which provides a relatively broad mix of covered bond advisory and restructuring services, training, analytics and he’s also doing some media work on the side.
Kemmish’s covered bond blog, which has been running since 2012, has now been taken up by Euromoney’s conference page. He didn’t respond to our request for comment, but Kemmish’s move is indicative of an increasing number of senior investment bankers going it alone.
Marc Parusat, the former head of European communications infrastructure and private equity groups at Macquarie, launched his own corporate finance firm Xpand Capital Partners in April, while Mark Valentine and Richard Fulton, senior bankers in Citi’s securitised products team, launched their own hedge fund Flemyn LLP.
Last year covered bonds issuance in Europe slipped to a ten-year low, to $166bn, according to data provider Dealogic. Credit Suisse has lost a number of people in this area including Sabine Winkler, a covered bond analyst, and Claudia Interbitzen and Andreas Kraft, who both worked on the trading side.
Related articles:
Senior Barclays repo trader signs up to Millennium hedge fund spin-off
Ex-BNP Paribas managing directors launch new hedge fund
RBS’s $11m ‘golden hello’ sales super-star Polverino launches own hedge fund