There was a time when everyone was leaving banks for hedge funds. Now the flow goes both ways. Take Mark Dixon, a European equities trader at Barclays.
Dixon’s FCA registration shows that he began his career at Barclays in 2005 before leaving in 2007 to work for hedge fund Millennium Capital Partners. Dixon worked at Millennium in London until 2011 when he disappeared off the FCA Register (possibly to work overseas) before returning for another 13 month stint at the London hedge fund until March this year, when he quit and went back to Barclays – where he began.
Barclays declined to comment on Dixon’s appointment, but the bank is focusing attention on its equities sales and trading business as an area of strategic growth – although revenues in its business only increased by 5% year-on-year in the first quarter.
Millennium Capital Partners, meanwhile, has a reputation has an uncompromising place to work. It continues to attract traders from banks, however: the FCA Register shows that it just hired Charaf Tahiri, a former prop trader from Nomura who was most recently a director at Citi.