A month ago theweeklyFiX wrote about defections from Barclays Capital’s US sales team in New York. (FX people moves: Exodus from Barclays) On Tuesday the bank announced several new hires, although not all to the seats vacated.
Mike Testa joins BarCap New York as head of real money FX sales, Americas; he will report to Gregg Chow, head of north American FX sales. Testa has spent the past 15 years at Citi New York, most recently in a similar role to his new one.
Marlena Demenus joins BarCap New York to cover FX sales to banks and commodity trading advisers; she will report to Jeffrey Pio, head of the FX sales access desk. Demenus has been at Morgan Stanley for the past 10 years, most recently as global head of CTA sales.
BarCap has also hired James White from UBS to cover hedge fund FX sales in New York, as well as David Weiss from Deutsche to cover corporate FX sales in San Francisco.
We caught up with Gregg Chow, head of FX sales in north America, who told us: “The new hires are directed towards those areas where we think we have a competitive advantage as a firm. For example, we hired Mike Testa to lead our real money effort. One of his primary responsibilities will be to leverage the existing asset manager relationships of the firm to deliver FX products and solutions. It is one of our top priorities to cross-sell FX products and services across the firm’s client franchise.
“In the North American category of the Euromoney FX survey this year, we went from fourth to second. In the sub sectors we did well in hedge funds, asset managers and in banks. We also ranked well in options and e-commerce. We think these results demonstrate our considerable investment in our global FX business and our clients’ recognition of the strength of the Barclays Capital platform across assets.”
However no one at Barclays New York wanted to comment on the rumour that Paul Ainsworth is relocating to its e-commerce sales desk from Barclays London.
