Equity research is a precarious profession in the City of London. With the ‘unbundling’ of research costs under MiFID II, clients will soon be charged for research independently of trade execution costs. This is prompting all sorts of banks to rethink their research offerings. – Haitong Securities has cut around half of its equity researchers in London; Nomura has cut the lot. Jefferies, however, is hiring.
In the past month, Jefferies has made two significant research hires according to the UK’s FCA Register, and one corporate access professional.
They are Bogdan Georgescu, Philippe Houchois and Ross MacKay.
Georgescu joins as an EMEA equity research product manager in London from Piper Jaffray in New York City. Houchois joins as an MD in automotive research after spending eight years in a similar role at UBS. MacKay joins as a ‘strategic corporate access’ professional after spending six years in corporate broking at UBS and two years in investor relations at Hays.
Jefferies declined to comment. Equities sales and trading revenues at Jefferies were just $2m in the first quarter of 2016, down from $203m one year earlier. However, the bank said that this was due to a, ‘$145 million difference in net revenues related to two listed equity block positions,’ along with a corporate lending loss which was recorded in the equities line. As such, it should be a one-off.
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