It’s not just Huw Van Steenis who’s leaving Morgan Stanley for the buy-side: it’s also one of the U.S. bank’s recently hired junior traders. Victor Debenedetti, an analyst in Morgan Stanley’s corporate and sovereign bond trading team in London, quit last month for Oak Hill Advisors in New York City.
While Van Steenis (a banking analyst), spent 14 years at Morgan Stanley before deciding that Schroders was more appealing, Debenedetti (whom we estimated to be aged around 23) gave the bank far less time: he quit after just 13 months. This is despite Morgan Stanley’s new policy of promoting the top 10% of analysts in its securities business to associates after just two years.
It’s not clear exactly what Debenedetti will be up to at Oak Hill Advisors, but the fund specializes in distressed and under-performing credit investments and has $29bn under management, so some kind of trading role with the potential to move into portfolio management seems probable.
For other London-based traders who’d like to cross the Atlantic, there’s always Point72, the family office founded by Steve Cohen. Point72 has a newish London office, but Cohen said in May that he’s “blown away by the lack of talent” on offer globally and has been known to make transatlantic hires in the past. It’s also worth noting that while Debenedetti is French by birth and attended a French Lycee, he took his bachelors degree at the University of Pennsylvania – which is always helpful if you want to work for a fund on Wall Street.
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Contact: SButcher@eFinancialCareers.com
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