Chris O’Malley: The dark arts of the syndicate

IN ADDITION

Fifty years of capital markets Jim Amine Samir Assaf Jean-Francois Astier Allegra Berman Mandy DeFilippo Jerry del Missier Bob Diamond Tyler Dickson Eric Dobkin Martin Egan Jim Esposito Peter Hancock Guy Hands Jeremy Isaacs Conor Killeen John McNiven Vikram Pandit Hans-Joerg Rudloff John St John Paul Tregidgo Matthew Westerman

Chris O’Malley started out at stockbroker Phillips & Drew in 1974 at a time when the debt side of the firm was dominant. In part, this was down to the winning of a big contract for the Mars pension fund, which insisted on a first-class gilts operation.

O’Malley started in short gilts, before moving into local authority bonds. But by 1977 he would be on the move. 

“I was in line to move onto the long gilt desk, but then the firm hired Philip Howard from Deltec, one of the original Eurobond trading houses, and I was offered the opportunity to join him to set up a new international bond business for the firm,” says O’Malley. 

He describes the market in those days as a strange place.