Deutsche Bank's FX business keeps ejecting hires from US banks
Deutsche Bank's FX business likes to hire people from big American banks. But the people from big American banks who join Deutsche Bank's FX business don't necessarily last.
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Having first let go of Caryn Freiberger in June, whom it hired from Citi to be its US head of FX institutional sales 18 months previously, Deutsche has now also let go of Shuo Wu, the London-based head of FX forwards it hired from JPMorgan in 2019.
Wu admittedly lasted a lot longer than Frieberger, but with the DB FX business in flux, it's a reminder that European banks aren't necessarily a cosy option.
Wu's exit appears to be part of yet another shake-up of DB's FX team, which Bloomberg says also claimed Logan Campbell, the London-based head of FX derivatives trading, whom the FCA Register says had been at the German since at least 2002. New York-based Barry McCarthy, who left Deutsche after 13 years with the bank last August, has - however - returned after a seeming sabbatical.
The latest changes come after grumbling earlier this year about hiring and firing decisions made by Sameen Farooqui and Chris Leonard, Deutsche's new FX heads following the retirement of Russell LaScala, the bank's global head of FX in 2023.
Farooqui and Leonard have been stamping their own imprint on the business. Various people have disappeared. - Freiberger, Wu, Campbell are the latest in a list of exits which have also included Hans Ephraimson, the global head of FX sales and David Leigh, the former head of European FX.
However, Farooqui and Leonard have also hired: Oliver Jerome, a former Morgan Stanley trader who left to found a fintech, unexpectedly appeared as head of European FX product at Deutsche Bank in April, apparently to some internal disquiet.
Changes to the FX business may not be over. Deutsche Bank's FX business notoriously derives much of it self-worth from the Euromoney FX survey, but having ranked first in 2022 and 2023 it's now ceded that position to UBS and must content itself with just being best in Western Europe and Asia instead.
Bloomberg notes that Deutsche's overall fixed income sales and trading revenues fell 3% year-on-year in the second quarter.
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