Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan said goodbye to top rates traders
If you're a senior rates trader at a major US bank, and you've been working for over a decade, this looks like a good moment to retire.
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At least this is the message from senior people in London at both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
As we reported last week, Tom Prickett, the EMEA head of rates trading at JPMorgan, stepped down on Friday to "pursue other opportunities." A few days earlier, Nirubhan
Pathmanabhan and Yibo Bao, Goldman Sachs' co-head of global rates trading and its head of interest rate options and exotics trading in Europe respectively, also resigned, seemingly in pursuit of long retirements.
All three had been around. Prickett spent 24 years at JPMorgan. Pathmanabhan had been at Goldman since at least 2001; Bao had been with Goldman for over 20 years.
The exits follow indications that 2024 was a bad year for rates traders in Europe. BCG Expand estimated that revenues on European rates desks fell by 43% year-on-year in the first nine months of last year. At Goldman Sachs, however, unrealized gains from rates market making rose from $713m to $4.9bn in the first nine months of the year.
All three men appear to have negotiated exits, which presumably included 2024 bonuses. They're not the only lifers looking for something different. Ali Khan, the EMEA head of rates and options trading at Nomura, also left at the end of last year, for example.
It's conceivable that the "other opportunities" awaiting the departing traders might mean a job in a hedge fund. However, traders who've had steady careers in banks sometimes exhibit more erratic behaviour once they reach the buyside. Nohshad Shah, for example, spent eight years at Goldman, where he became co-head of EMEA rates sales, and hired his Deutsche Bank friend Ishaan Sethi. The two men left together for hedge fund Marshall Wace in early 2023, but Shah left again after just sixteen months in September and has just resurfaced at Citadel Securities.
Prickett's departure at JPMorgan means that his reports - Julian Baker, Badr Mernissi, Keith Price, Goya Subramanian and Nok To - will now report directly to global head of rates trading, Matthew Franklin-Lyons. At Goldman Sachs, Nikhil Choraria, head of the inflation desk, will become head of European interest-rate products.
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