Goldman Sachs' top London traders: the definitive list
Goldman Sachs' trading teams have lost a bit of their luster.
2022 wasn’t great anywhere, but Goldman’s salespeople and traders unperformed more than others last year. Fixed income sales and trading performed well - revenues at the firm rose by nearly 40% in 2022 vs. 2021, compared to an increase of just 16% at Bank of America. The bank has also lost some pretty senior traders to hedge funds like Millennium.
Even so, Goldman Sachs still has some of the best traders in the market. Courtesy of the Financial Conduct Authority register, we have listed its top traders across all asset classes in London below. Let us know if you think names are missing.
Jon Yarrow – head of gas, power, carbon, and LNG trading
Yarrow has been with Goldman since 2005 (excluding a seven-month affair as a portfolio manager at Castleton Commodities, the commodities trader). He was with Australian miner BHP Billiton before that as a gas, power, and coal trader.
Andrew Pertinence
Giulia Magnani
Piotr Zurawski – head of global systematic trading strategies (and co-head of fund derivatives trading)
Zurawski joined Goldman in 2014 and was an exotics trader at JPMorgan before that. He started his career as an emerging markets strategist at the National Bank of Poland, the country’s central bank.
Rajesh Venkataramani – head of global currencies and emerging markets foreign exchange
A Goldman Sachs lifer (since 2000) and partner (since 2014). Venkataramani started his career in New York and bounced between the big apple and the big smoke throughout his career. He's settled down in London since reaching partner, however.
Matt Reid
Lily Koh
Borislav Vladimirov
Shun Kobayashi
Sarah Kouch
Amit Jain – head of European loan trading (par and distressed debt)
Jain has been at Goldman since just 2021, having joined the firm from hedge fund Ironshield, where he was a partner and portfolio manager. He started his career in New York with Citi but moved to London in 2002.
Stefan Djukic
Andrew Forester – head of European SP flow trading
Forester joined Goldman in 2016 after 6 years with Barclays in London.
Davide Trinello
Puneet Malhi - head of global synthetic trading
Also Goldman’s co-head of prime brokerage for EMEA. He joined Goldman in 2000, and was named MD in 2002, and partner in 2006.
Pavlos Syrimis – head of single stock derivatives trading
Syrimis joined Goldman in 2013 as an equity derivates trader from Allesley Investment Group. He was made co-head of single stock derivatives trading as an associate director in 2018, and took over the division singularly when named executive director in 2019.
Marco Gottschalk – head of global short-term power trading
Gottschalk was at Statkraft, the Norwegian state-owned hydroelectric company, for four years before joining Goldman in 2021. He moved to London for the bank from Dusseldorf.
Andrei Kazantsev – global head of crypto trading
Kazantsev was Goldman’s global head of FX flow exotics and structured products before being put in charge of the team building out the bank’s presence in the crypto trading space. He joined Goldman in 2011 after a PhD in chemical engineering.
Tim Arblaster
Pushkar Jha
Ediz Karahasanoglu – head of emerging markets equity intermediation trading
Another Goldman “lifer”, Karahasanoglu has been running something or another at the firm since 2015 (the emerging markets equity derivatives trading business). He joined in 2013 and was made MD just last year.
Nick Baltas – head of XA delta one and commodities strategies R&D and structuring
A title so long you’ll need a degree from Imperial College Business School to know what it is. Luckily, Baltas is also a “visiting researcher” at the university – so you can just ask him there. He joined Goldman in 2017, from UBS, where he was an ED in quantitative research.
Richard Privorotsky – head of European cash equities trading
Another Goldman lifer who moved from New York to London for the firm, Privorotsky has been with Goldman since 2008. He moved to London in 2011 for the bank, was made MD in 2018, and partner just this year.
Francois Mauran – head of systematic trading strategies, fixed income currencies and commodities
Mauran joined Goldman as an executive director in 2003. He’s worked in both the bank’s fixed income and FICC teams, and has been an MD since 2011.
James Roberts – global head of emerging markets local currency SSA
Roberts joined Goldman in 2021 after nearly seven years at JPMorgan in London, where he started his career. He is an ED.
Ahmed Ismail
Yibo Bao – head of interest rate options and exotics trading, Europe
Another Goldman Sachs lifer, Bao joined the firm in 2004, the same year he graduated from Cambridge. He was made an MD in 2012 and a partner in 2018.
Regis Maignan
David Ossack – global head of emerging markets foreign exchange options
Ossack is a Goldman lifer and joined the bank in 2005 from Warwick. He’s been part of the foreign exchange (FX) team since then, and was made MD in 2018.
David Cornish – head of EMEA quantitative sales, co-head of EMEA electronic equities
Cornish joined Goldman from JPMorgan in just 2018, and is an MD.
Johannes Steffens – head of emerging markets credit sales
Also made MD in 2018, Steffens has been with Goldman since 2010, when he joined from RBS.
Pooja Bajaj
Marco Branca – co-head of EMEA interest rate product sales, head of global markets division sales to Southern Europe
Goldman lifer Branca has been with the firm since 2001, when he graduated from Bocconi. He was made MD in 2022.
Abel Elizalde – head of credit market strategy team
Elizalde joined Goldman in 2015 from Citi. He was made MD in 2020.
Emmanuel Bodenstein – head of investment grade sales
Bodenstein joined Goldman in 2012 from Credit Suisse. He took a promotion with the move, moving from director to MD with the transfer.
Thomas Plank – co-head of EMEA emerging market trading
Another Goldman lifer, Plank joined the bank in 2010. He had a string of promotions, starting in 2017, from head of EMEA emerging market structured trading, to head of EMEA emerging market credit trading and structured trading, to his current position. He was made MD in 2018.
Justin Lomheim - global co-head of commodities financing and structured trading
Lomheim was promoted to MD in 2011 and partner in 2022.
Andrew Fisher – head of EMEA flow & strategic equity derivatives trading
Having joined Goldman in 2005, the year of his graduation, Fisher is a Goldman lifer. He was made the bank’s EMEA chief of strategic equity derivatives trading in February 2017 before the “flow &” was added in November that year. He was made MD in 2013.
Alex Harman – head of EMEA electronic and program trading, co-head of EMEA electronic trading
Harman joined Goldman from Barclays in 2014. He was made co-head of EMEA electronic trading in 2018, an MD in 2020, and head of EMEA electronic and program trading in 2022.
Benjamin Binet Laisne – head of precious metals trading
Despite only joining Goldman in 2015, Binet is the head of Goldman’s precious metals trading operation in London. He is, however, not even an MD.
Leonie Morel – head of fundamental strategies group
Morel, who joined Goldman in 2001, was made an MD in the class of 2015. She’s also a school governor, in case you thought you had too little free time.
Mark Seymour
Thalia Chryssikou – co-head of global sale strategy and structuring in FICC & equities
A Goldman lifer, Chryssikou joined the bank in 1998 after her PhD at MiT and was made partner in 2012. She’s been its head of EMEA interest rate, currency & emerging market strategies, head of EMEA interest rate sales, and co-chair of the structured investment products committee.
Hekmat Tannous
Niccolo Laudiero – co-head of EMEA structured sales
Laudiero joined Goldman from Credit Suisse in 2014. He was made MD in 2018.
Ben Readman – head of environmental products trading and European power
Readman joined Goldman in 2021 from Macquarie, where he was head of environmental products and continental power. Presumably, Goldman taught him how to trade in the process.
Lear Janiv
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