In the three years since Ivan Ritossa moved to Singapore, assuming the role of head of rates, Asia-Pacific, in addition to that of global head of foreign exchange, Barclays’ share of the FX market has continued to increase.
The past year has been no different, as the results of Euromoney’s FX survey show. Barclays is now hot on the heels of second-placed UBS, with a market share that passes the 11% threshold for the first time. Five years ago, Barclays had just broken into the top-five overall banks, with a market share of just 5.8%.
Alongside this impressive performance there has been an increase in the market’s perception of the quality of the bank’s staff. But recently the bank has become less successful at retaining them.
Defections
Despite only recently having been made a managing director, Manny Monahogios, Barclays’ head of US corporate FX sales in New York, left the bank in mid-April. He took director Ben Gibson and two others with him; sources say the team is probably headed for Morgan Stanley. The bank also lost four sales staff in New York around the same time last year.
Barclays has also been experiencing staff defections in London. Possibly the biggest loss was that of Sean Comer, the bank’s FX chief operating officer, to Deutsche Bank at the end of last year.
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Since Barclays is one of the leading global foreign exchange houses, with great momentum in terms of the growth in its market share, it seems obvious that competitors will target its staff as they try to fulfil their own ambitions |
Richard Longmore, Barclays’ head of EMEA institutional FX sales, left the bank in March, and is rumoured to be joining Lloyds. At least six more FX staff across trading and sales left the bank in the last two weeks of April. Among these was Guido Arslan in hedge fund FX sales. Market sources said the ex-Goldman Sachs salesman was taking FX salesman Giovanni Matteucci with him and teaming up with Fabrizio Russo at Nomura. Russo is Nomura’s head of European FX sales and spent the briefest of times on Barclays’ payroll himself before joining the Japanese bank.
Others leaving include hedge fund salesman Paul Brandley, spot sterling/dollar trader Frank Cahill (to HSBC), Oxana Saunders in hedge fund sales, Lincoln Shepherd in real money sales, and FX structurer John Bradley.
Some observers suggest that there had been some disappointment over bonuses for 2009. Competitors wonder if it is possible that the 100%-plus increases in pay the bank was said to have given investment bank staff last December were not enough to create competitive overall packages.
Bonus response
The change in remuneration policy was said to be a response to the 50% bonus tax imposed by the UK government. An interesting element of the pay deal was that although the increases were to be backdated six months they would have to be repaid, gross, if the employee left before June. This would make Barclays staff punitively expensive to hire around the usual migration time; but obviously not expensive enough.
Since Barclays is one of the leading global foreign exchange houses, with great momentum in terms of the growth in its market share, it seems obvious that competitors will target its staff as they try to fulfil their own ambitions. Barclays will hope that the reasons do not run deeper than this. It was often said that Comer was the glue that held the Barclays London FX operation together; it would be a pity if, having secured its top-three position, the operation now started to come unstuck.
