Forget credit. Forget FX. Forget commodities and securitization and emerging markets. If you want to do well in fixed income trading now, you need to be in G10 rates. So said finance intelligence firm Coalition earlier this month, and so said banking analysts at J.P. Morgan last week. Maybe this is why BNP Paribas just brought veteran rates trader David Moore out of ‘academic retirement’ to head its G10 rates business in the Americas.
Moore arrived at BNP in August according to his LinkedIn profile. A Cambridge University graduate, Moore made his name at Morgan Stanley, where he worked for 27 and a half years. Moore was Morgan Stanley’s head of rates until January 2011, at which point it was reported at the time that he was “pushed out” following a missed revenue target. In fact, Moore stayed at Morgan Stanley for another three years as head of US rates trading. This was followed by a brief stint as a portfolio manager at hedge fund Brevan Howard and a contract as a visiting lecturer in quantitative finance at Harvard University.
Now Moore’s at Paribas and U.S. headhunters say he’s hiring. In its last strategic plan, the French bank declared its intention of building a presence in the U.S. market. Revenues in its fixed income division were up 17% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2016, driven in part by the rates business.
For the moment, however, there’s little evidence of Moore’s hires, and senior bankers in other areas of BNP’s U.S. fixed income business seem to be leaving. Craig Schubert, a director on the covered bond trading desk left for Cantor in August and Jim Turner, BNP’s ex-head of U.S. debt capital markets left in June. After a 30 year career in banking, Turner says he’s “retired to the beach.”
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Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
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