Shooter, who left Credit Suisse two weeks ago after 12 years with the firm, is regarded as one of the leading hedge fund salespeople in the FX markets, specializing in currency option sales. Sources say that in recent years he was known to generate sales credits close to $100 million per annum.
Shooter’s departure from Credit Suisse came just six months after he was promoted to global head of FX sales, as part of the firm’s merger of its FX and emerging markets (EM) fixed-income divisions, which formed the global currencies and EM group.
JB Drax was established in 2004 by Jonathan Glassberg and Benn Shepherd, and has Australian investment bank Macquarie as a minority shareholder.
The broker, which declined to comment on Shooter’s hire, acts as an agent in both listed futures and over-the-counter products, such as FX.
It is believed that, by hiring Shooter, JB Drax hopes it will be able to secure the large volumes traded by some of the market’s key hedge fund accounts. It is widely known that the Geneva-based hedge fund Brevan Howard was one of Shooter’s most active clients when he was at Credit Suisse.
Agency broking models are typically structured with higher sales-commission models than the principal-based bank-to-client model, whereby a sales trader can receive bonus payments of between 20% and 30% of revenues generated from client trades.