A Japanese bank has been quietly hiring for its London credit desk

Remember Robert Balch? He's the former global head of credit distribution at UBS who joined SMBC Nikko Capital Markets as head EMEA fixed income in October 2019. Two months later, Balch hired Catalin Rusu from SocGen to run credit trading. One year on, he's been making some other new hires too.

Last month, Balch recruited Graham Root to head UK credit sales for SMBC. Root too came from SocGen. This month, we understand that Balch has also recruited Simon Quinn to join the credit sales team for the Japanese bank. And another new credit hire is understood to be starting Monday.

Root spent 14 years at SocGen, where he was a director of UK credit sales until May 2020. Quinn is an ex-Barclays managing director who spent 14 years at the bank focused on investment grade credit sales before leaving for independent investment bank Imperial Capital in 2019. 

Sources say Balch has a mandate to upgrade SMBC's credit trading business, which has also suffered from some departures. 

Earlier this week banking intelligence firm Coalition identified credit desks in U.S. investment banks as the most active area of global front office hiring in 2020.

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

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