From the outside at least, it looks as if Bank of America (BoA) has seen a mass of departures this year but the bank is keen to emphasize it is not all one-way traffic and show that its revolving door is bringing staff in as quickly as it takes them out.
In the week that it announced a major senior-level change, BoA has finally got around to listing the names of those who have joined so far in 2007. The biggest news is that Thomas White is to become its head of global markets, replacing Mark Werner, who is leaving the bank to pursue the euphemism known as “other opportunities”. White will be based in New York and report to Gene Taylor, BoA’s president of global corporate and investment banking.
There now follows a long list of less senior appointments made this year – some recent, some slightly older. Kaushik Dutta is a new recruit, joining from Lehman Brothers in Asia to trade exotic options and help develop BoA’s Asia correlation business. Assisting him will be Wilson Quihui Lee, who has joined from Credit Suisse. Jeremy Ong also joined the team in Singapore, coming across from United Overseas Bank. He will focus on structuring.
In March, Angela Tan joined as a VP on the bank sales team in Singapore from JPMorgan and Kotaro Kunimochi came on board from Barclays in February to trade yen. Hideaki Furumaya is another fresh appointment in Tokyo, joining from Trust and Custody Services Bank.
The bank has recruited eight new staff in New York. Sean Statuto joined ship from the US Navy, while Justin Mitrani and Robert Gomprecht joined the prime brokerage team from Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan respectively. Burt Sheaffer has come in as a correlation trader from Lehman, while Joe Landes has been appointed as a senior trader on the G10 spot desk. Previously he was at Dresdner NY where he managed FX sales and trading.
Last month Christopher Hughes joined the sales team from hedge fund Tudor; Kevin Zhu came from Citigroup and and starts on the portfolio and research strategy team (PARS) as an analyst/programmer and Herbert Perez joined as head of GFX Americas and global head of spot & emerging market currency trading. Perez was previously country treasurer for BoA in Mexico. The bank says it has also made hires regionally in Charlotte and Los Angeles.
In Europe, Siobhan Barry joined the FX sales team in Dublin and there have been five hires so far in London. Gavin Millbank joined the FX quant team in May from Deutsche Bank and Ralph Wopshott, KengSuan Goh, Sophie Charlotte Bundle and Sophie Farivarz all joined the analyst programme.