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Goldie-Morrison |
If you can make it here, so the song goes, you can make it anywhere. But New York hasn’t been that accommodating to Duncan Goldie-Morrison. The towering Scot, head of global markets for Banc of America Securities, only moved there from Chicago last year.
Now his boss, Ed Brown, head of the global corporate and investment bank, has restructured G-M’s division, leaving him without a job. Brown says it was “in order to better integrate the way in which we serve clients and more effectively link our originate-to-distribute model across GCIB”. Well, of course it was.
Yet the only change is to get rid of Goldie-Morrison and his position. William Fall, head of international GCIB and structured products, will now run rates, commodities and foreign exchange, while head of debt capital markets Bill Hodges will take on fixed-income research. These two, with Chris Mandell, head of institutional sales, now report directly to Brown.
A year ago Brown thought that fewer direct reporting lines were best. Hodges and Goldie-Morrison both reported to Brown but at Christmas 2001 Hodges was demoted, while keeping his responsibilities, and had to report to the man previously his equal. That was also done for client service reasons.
BofA, usually open, is cagey on this story. But an observer says G-M “wasn’t happy trying to build a debt-type client business. He was much happier in foreign exchange or taking punts on derivatives”.
Not enough of a punt for one investor who says: G-M’s departure could be a result of “not increasing revenues in foreign exchange and derivatives to where they ought to be. They have not been taking on enough risk.” That’s an unusual thing for an investor to say but he’s looking at the $900 million forex prop traders made for Goldman Sachs in the first nine months of 2001. BofA made $500 million in total that year, largely through client business.
Market rumour says Jorge Jasson, former head of emerging markets at JPMorgan, is close to joining BofA. But wouldn’t that involve another reshuffle?
