People moves: Standard Chartered shows muscle with Allington hire
Chris Allington is joining Standard Chartered in a senior FX role. Although unconfirmed, sources predict the role will encompass G10 FX. He is known to be an, “excellent trader with very good customer contacts, especially in the real money and hedge fund spaces”. Allington was last at Goldman Sachs, which he joined in March last year. Before that he was at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he rose from a humble spot trader to become co-head of G10 currency trading.
Allington started out at Chemical, which was absorbed into JPMorgan Chase, so this move reunites him with his former colleague at JPM, Richard Leighton, who is now global head of FX at StanChart.
Leighton joined StanChart in 2004. Since his arrival, but especially over the last three years, the bank has made some notable hires in FX sales to financial institutions, including Oliver Jerome (also ex-JPM) as head of bank sales; Adrian Walkling (ex-UBS), head of financial institutions sales; Ken Reich (ex-Goldman); and Sam Wotta (ex-BarCap). With the appointment of Allington and, last year, Behnouche Mostachfi, global head of options and a former colleague of Allington’s at BofA/Merrill, StanChart is expected to make a real breakthrough into the top tier of global FX houses.
As we reported last March (see StanChart stays in billionaire club), FX revenues for 2008 of $1.194 billion show the bank is already a serious player in the business. This performance is somewhat at odds with its market share ranking in the poll – 11th among voters based in Asia, Middle East and Africa (detailed below) and 21st among voters based in Western Europe plus North America (see below).
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