Leighton started his career at Midland Bank in the mid 1980s working on the forward FX and specialised trading and research desks. From Midland he went to Chase (later JPMorgan Chase) and rose to become global head of options and commodities. He retired temporarily in only to return to the City in 2004 to run foreign exchange at StanChart. In 2009 Leighton was given the additional role of head of fixed income for Europe.
Under Leighton StanChart’s performance has been steady rather than spectacular. In 2005 the bank was outside the top 20 banks in global FX market share; by last year had it climbed to 16th place.
However since Leighton joined StanChart the bank’s FX profitability has increased radically; the bank first reported FX revenues in excess of $1 billion for the first time in 2007 and in 2008 FX comprised more than half of the bank’s financial markets division’s revenue of $2.365 billion. In 2009 financial market’s profit rose 40% to $3.311 billion although the contribution from FX was not stated.
Leighton will stay at the bank until the end of July but his role will be taken over by Nitin Gulabani immediately. Gulabani joined StanChart in 2007 as global head of interest rate derivatives and was later made global head of rates; he had previously been head of currencies and commodities, Asia-Pacific, at Deutsche.
In the last three years, the bank has made some notable hires in FX sales: 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). Most recently Leighton reinforced the trading side with the appointment Behnouche Mostachfi, global head of options (ex BofA/Merrill) and Chris Allington from Goldman Sachs.
In an internal StanChart note, Remy Klammers, the bank’s head of fixed income trading, said: “While I am disappointed to lose an extremely talented friend and colleague, I respect his decision to pursue his personal interests outside the banking industry.
“Over the past six years, Richard has done a terrific job in building our FX business into a premier global franchise and has developed a high quality team. He will be missed by his many friends across the Bank when he departs at the end of July.”
Leighton’s parting from StanChart is extremely amicable but he has always been aware that there is a world outside banking. This has been even more the case recently; Leighton has two young children. As the global head of a business so heavily focused on Asia, the constant travelling, and time spent away from his family, started to weigh too heavily.
Leighton was on his way to Hong Kong on the first leg of the hand-over arrangements when he told the FiX: “It has been a fantastic experience at a unique institution but its the right time for me to do something completely different, spend more time with my young family and stop travelling and being permanently jet-lagged! The bank have been fantastically understanding and I’m comfortable in the fact that SCB is light years ahead of where it was when I joined nearly seven years ago – I had planned to stay for two – in FX and FX options. I’m passing on to Nitin Gulabani who is immensely capable of running this complex business as well as the rates area he manages currently. “
