This is not the best time to be working in fixed income for Barclays in London. Nearly 30% of Barclays’ investment banking staff are being made redundant, and Barclays’ London-based fixed income traders are bearing the brunt of the layoffs. Those who survive will probably be paid less. They will also be subject to behavioural therapy by compliance staff bearing certification from Barclays’ new compliance training centre in Cambridge.
At least one Barclays trader/structurer has decided to escape. Sachin Patel, a vice president who worked on asset liability management solutions and inflation-linked asset and credit derivative liability hedging at Barclays, has quit. Patel left Barclays in January this year. However, he didn’t take the obvious next step and call Royal Bank of Canada. – Patel has resurfaced at ‘Funding Circle’, a new ‘online marketplace for business loans.’
Unfortunately, neither Funding Circle nor Patel were around to discuss the move. Before he worked at Barclays, Patel was a structurer at JPMorgan. At Funding Circle, he will be ‘head of UK Capital Markets,’ a role in which his remit is unclear. Funding Circle, which had distributed £300m to small businesses in the UK as of June 2014.
Patel might be glad to be away from the fustiness of Barclays, however. On its website, Funding Circle boasts that it’s a ‘young friendly team’ which plays as hard as it works and loves socializing together. Accordingly, there are some photos of a man playing table tennis and a woman holding beer.
Other Barclays traders might want to get in touch. They will be helped by the fact that Patel isn’t the only ex-Barclays man to have found a niche at Funding Circle. The company also employs Luke Jooste, a former commercial director at Barclays’ UK retail and business bank.
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