People moves: Deutsche hires new treasury unit head; markets role for Barclays’ Pecot; Penney leaves HSBC, and more

Deutsche Bank has hired François Jourdain as head of its new treasury markets and investments team, a unit created as part of a reorganisation of the German lender’s treasury function. Jourdain reports to group treasurer Dixit Joshi.

Jourdain joins from Barclays, where he was chief compliance officer until January 2018, when he relinquished the role to focus full time on his position as chair of the Bank of England-convened sterling risk-free reference rate working group. He held the position until earlier this year, when he was replaced by Barclays chief financial officer Tushar Morzaria.

His previous roles at Barclays include deputy treasurer and head of treasury funding and investment. 

The overhaul of the treasury department follows Deutsche’s decision to exit equity sales and trading, announced in July. Jourdain’s new team will look for ways to boost efficiency of the bank’s asset and liability management in Europe’s ultra-low interest rate environment.

Elsewhere at the German bank, Spyros Mesomeris is leaving after nine years on the research team. Mesomeris served as global head of quantitative strategy and quantitative investment solutions research at the bank. The research team moved from equities to the fixed income side, within rates, following the bank’s pullback from equities. Mesomeris helped his team win Risk.net’s research team of the year award in 2018 and 2019.

Caio Natividade will replace Mesomeris as global head of quantitative investment solutions research. Natividade joined the bank as a graduate in 2002, and has served as head of cross-asset quantitative research since 2012. 

Arie Boleslawski, former head of trading at Societe Generale (SG), has resurfaced at Natixis, where he has been appointed global head of equities in the corporate and investment banking division.

He arrived at the French investment bank in August, Natixis confirms, reporting to Selim Mehrez, global head of equity derivatives and fixed income. In his new role, Boleslawski will be in charge of equity derivatives trading and will co-supervise global secured funding alongside Mehrez.

In late 2018, Natixis merged its Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea) equity derivatives and fixed income teams under Mehrez, creating a new cross-asset financial engineering department headed by Elie Bitton, who was previously the bank’s Emea head of sales and fixed income financial engineering.

Natixis’s global ambitions to expand equity derivatives and structured products activities suffered a setback last December when the bank took a €260 million ($287 million) hit on its South Korean structured products book. The bank has since looked to cut its exposure, offloading around a third of its Korean equity-linked securities book through a $2.5 billion notional sale to a group of banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch and BNP Paribas.

Boleslawski spent two decades at SG, but left the bank in April following a round of job cuts in which his global head of trading role was eliminated. He is one of a slew of equity derivatives stalwarts to leave the French dealer since 2017, including former global markets head Frank Drouet, and former equity and equity derivatives head Richard Quessette.

Beginning his career in 1998 as a delta one equities trader at SG, Boleslawski traded exotics on equities and funds before shifting to head structured credit in the US. His long-standing tenure at the French equity derivatives powerhouse was broken by an 18-month stint at Deutsche Bank between 2006 and 2008, when he headed credit correlation at the German lender.

Boleslawski rejoined SG in 2008 as head of structured equity and fixed income trading. He worked alongside Mehrez, who moved to SG from Goldman Sachs around the same time to head pricing and new products for equity derivatives. 

Barclays has appointed Matt Pecot as head of markets for Asia-Pacific, in addition to his current role as head of equities for the region. Pecot will continue to be based in Hong Kong, reporting to Stephen Dainton, head of global markets. He joined Barclays in 2018 as head of equities, leaving Credit Suisse.

The move follows a string of recent equity hires, including the bank’s appointment of Fater Belbachir as global head of equities earlier this year. Belbachir was previously global head of volatility trading at JP Morgan.

Mark Penney is leaving his role as head of capital management for global markets at HSBC. Penney has worked at the bank for more than 20 years, helping build the equity derivatives franchise and establish the global balance sheet management team. 

During his tenure at the bank, he advocated on behalf of the industry on a range of issues and was chair of the prudential board of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe. Penney’s next move is unclear.

Justin Klug, chief operating officer at capital markets technology provider Capitolis, is to become the firm’s president in addition to his current role. Klug has worked at Capitolis for two years, joining from Credit Suisse, where he led the US rates structuring team.

The firm has also appointed Joseph Molluso as chief financial officer. Molluso comes from proprietary trading firm Virtu Financial, where he held the same position. He will report to chief executive Gil Mandelzis. 

Virtu has hired Alex Ioffe to fill Molluso’s role. Ioffe was previously chief financial officer at Interactive Brokers Group. Virtu has also promoted Brett Fairclough to chief operating officer and global head of business development. Fairclough has been at the firm since 2007.

Nicolas Moreau has been appointed chief executive officer of HSBC Global Asset Management. He will join the firm in London and replace outgoing chief executive Sri Chandrasekharan, who will move into a yet-to-be-announced role at HSBC.  

Moreau is the former chief executive of DWS, Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, which he left last October. Asoka Woehrmann took his position as DWS chief executive. Moreau has also held various roles at insurer Axa. 

Citi has appointed Curt Engler as Asia-Pacific head of execution services. Based in Hong Kong, Engler will oversee execution for the bank’s regional cash equities business. Engler was previously head of trading for the Americas at JP Morgan Asset Management in New York.   

Tim Hailes has left JP Morgan after 20 years at the bank, largely working in the global equities business, to pursue interests in City of London politics. At JP Morgan, Hailes was co-head of the equities global practice group in the legal department of the corporate and investment bank, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Hailes has been active in regulatory advocacy, especially around the development of the EU’s Priips retail investment regulation, through his role as chairman of the Joint Association Committee on retail structured products. 

Tim Lipscomb has left his position at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as head of equities electronic trading technology, a role housed in the bank’s technology and operations group. 

Lipscomb had been at the bank for 20 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. It’s unclear what his next move will be.

Morgan Stanley has hired Anne-Juliette Laurencin as head of market risk for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She leaves JP Morgan, where she held various trading and market risk positions. In her new role, Laurencin reports to Lee Guy, chief risk officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Gregg Chow (pictured) has joined Crédit Agricole as head of foreign exchange sales covering financial institutions for the Americas. Based in New York, he reports to Kashif Zafar, head of global markets for the Americas.

Chow joins from Barclays, where he served as global head of real money sales. Before that, he worked at Bank of America. 

MUFG has hired David Paster as US head of corporate sales. Paster joins from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he was head of corporate foreign exchange sales.

In his new role, Paster will report to Bill Mansfield and Tatsuo Ichioka, regional head and deputy regional head of global markets for the Americas, respectively. Paster will be based in New York when he starts later this year.   

Iqbal Khan will join UBS as co-president of the bank’s global wealth management division. He was most recently chief executive officer of Credit Suisse’s international wealth management arm. Khan left Credit Suisse in July and was replaced by Philipp Wehle, formerly the company’s chief financial officer. At UBS, Khan succeeds Martin Blessing, who is stepping down.

Elsewhere at the bank, Sabine Keller-Busse’s role has expanded to include president of UBS in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in addition to her current role as group chief operating officer, which she has held since January 2018. Keller-Busse joined the bank in 2010. She previously held positions at Credit Suisse and McKinsey & Company. 

Keller-Busse succeeds Ulrich Körner, who is stepping down from the role and from his position as president of the bank’s asset management arm. Körner will serve as a senior adviser until at least the first quarter of next year.

Suni Harford will become president of asset management in Körner’s place. Hartford joined UBS from Citigroup in 2017 and is currently head of investments for asset management. 

All changes will be effective on October 1.

Execution services firm Instinet has filled two newly created roles. David Fellah becomes head of international quantitative trading strategy, and Seema Arora becomes head of execution sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Both will be based in London.

Fellah’s prior role was trading analytics head at ITG. He left ITG soon after the agency broker’s merger with Virtu Financial earlier this year. He also has experience at JP Morgan and Liquidnet. At Instinet, he will report to Richard Parsons, chief executive officer of Instinet Europe, and David Firmin, global head of trading research.

Arora will also report to Parsons. She most recently held a similar execution sales position at Kepler Cheuvreux. Arora held previous roles at JP Morgan and Dresdner Kleinwort.

David Ireland is the new chief financial officer at non-bank liquidity provider XTX Markets. Ireland joins from Nex Optimisation, where he was chief financial officer for three years. He held previous roles at Icap, Barclays and Deloitte, having started his career at Chemical Bank, now part of JP Morgan, in 1993. 

Credit Suisse has named Richard Gibb as chief executive officer of Australia. He will replace John Knox, who leaves the Swiss bank after a 24-year career. 

Gibb joins from Deutsche Bank, where he was head of corporate finance for Asia-Pacific – a post he held since 2016. Gibb has worked at Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust and Westpac during a 30-year career. He starts the new role in October.

Michel Planquart has been appointed chief executive officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at TP Icap. He previously served as global head of customer relationship management at the interdealer broker. Before then, Planquart held various positions at Citi.

Johnny Kang has joined Citadel as head of quantitative research for the convertible arbitrage business. Kang leaves his role as global co-head of research and innovation and head of credit research on the systematic fixed income team at BlackRock. Before that, he worked as a portfolio manager at AQR Capital Management, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Hedge fund ExodusPoint Capital Management has hired former Nex executive Jim Iorio, Risk.net understands. In the new role, Iorio oversees non-investment operations for the firm’s London office.

Iorio left CME earlier this year when the company cut senior managers at Nex. He previously held roles at Lehman Brothers and Barclays.

Tim Brennan has left ABN Amro’s clearing arm in Chicago, where he served as chief commercial officer, Risk.net understands. Brennan held the position for nearly four years, and before then he worked at the New York Stock Exchange, Ronin Capital and Merrill Lynch, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Brennan’s next move is not yet known.

US life insurer Northwestern Mutual has appointed Evamarie Schoenborn as president of its wealth management operations. In her new role, Schoenborn will be responsible for Northwestern Mutual’s retail investment products and services.

Meanwhile, Lori Brissette has been appointed to fill Schoenborn’s previous role as president of the company’s investment services outfit. Brissette joined the company in January 2018 and currently serves as vice-president of risk and investment client services.