Haitong's new head of UK investment banking has wasted little time in adding to the Chinese securities firm's growing European ranks, by recruiting former colleagues at his old employers, the independent capital markets boutique STJ Advisors and the Japanese bank Nomura.
Christian Thun-Hohenstein, who was named Haitong's head of investment banking in the UK in November 2015, on January 25 unveiled the new additions to the firm's European team, which will fill senior roles leading its financial institutions work and overseeing coverage of the Commonwealth of Independent States region.
Thun-Hohenstein, who spent four years as a partner at STJ before leaving in 2015 and before that worked at Nomura, where he ran European investment banking, has recruited Fabio Massimo Genovese, who led the financial institutions group at the Japanese bank from 2006 until 2011, as global head of FIG. Genovese was most recently a board director at Banca Generali, according to Haitong.
Maxim Seltzer, meanwhile, has joined as head of CIS investment banking coverage. Seltzer ran Russia and CIS investment banking at Nomura after joining in 2006, before joining the STJ team in 2010. He left in December 2015, according to the Financial Services Register and his LinkedIn profile.
Thun-Hohenstein worked with both Genovese and Seltzer in previous roles, a person familiar with the hires said.
Haitong's third hire, April Lu Boon Heng, joins as a director from DC Advisory and before that, also worked for Nomura, according to a Haitong statement announcing the new arrivals.
There were no more imminent hires in the pipeline, but one or two bankers could be added on the capital markets side.
The bank started planning its hiring drive in London a year ago, after Novo Banco, the "good bank" created from collapsed Portuguese lender Banco Espírito Santo, agreed a €379 million deal to sell its investment banking arm to Haitong. Head of research Nick Wilson told Financial News at the time that "stage two" of the bank's hiring push would be in partnership with Haitong.
The recent round of hires follows the bank's launch of a derivatives operation across equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities in September, the same month that it made a series of research hires including that of HSBC's former top metals and mining analyst Andrew Keen.
Thun-Hohenstein said in the statement that the trio "give us increased bench strength in the key target areas of Europe, emerging Europe, Latin America and Asia.”
Source: Financial News
See also: Reuters
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