If you were an investment banker looking to move into an expanding company last year, RBC Capital Markets was the place to go in London. While headcount was flat at most investment banks in the City, RBC upped employee numbers by 10% in 2014. Between July and December, it added 30 front office bankers, taking its London headcount to 530.
Has this spluttered to a halt in 2015? No – RBC seems to have picked up where it left off. So far in 2015 it’s been hiring research analysts, senior sales staff and traders from large and small competitors alike.
Most recently, the Canadian bank has been building its fixed income team. In the past few weeks, Andy Gowans, a rates trader, joined from Royal Bank of Scotland, Sami Hagege, a director in credit sales, joined from Deutsche Bank in Paris and, Rene Kuennen, who works in fixed income sales for Germany and Austria, has also joined from DZ Bank. So has Karl David Kutsche, a credit salesman who was previously at Credit Suisse.
RBC has also hired Tristan Lovegrove joined from Credit Suisse, where he was a director in M&A.
RBC is continuing to build out its fixed income trading team, following senior appointments last year. Sian Hurrell, a senior rates specialist at RBS, joined as head of fixed income and currencies sales, while Mike Foster was hired from Credit Suisse as head of central bank sales. Both seem to have been hiring from their former employers.
In equity research, Credit Suisse hired Matthew Spurr, an industrials analyst who joined from Esprito Santo. Most firms are cutting back on equity research recruits as the clampdown on research from MiFID II regulations loom. However, RBC has been bolstering its research functions over the past few months, including bringing in an entire team of telecoms analysts from Barclays’ investment bank.