Hiring on the Buy Side down 56% so far this year in Fixed Income Investment

Hiring across all areas of Fixed Income Investing (Including Product Management) over the first five months of 2011 has fallen 56% against the same period last year.

Hiring figures for April and May 2001 continued to perform weakly when compared with the same months last year ‐ with a 52% and 77% falls respectively (though some of the May movers may yet be announced).

Hiring throughout the year has been weak ‐ though it picked up towards the end of the first quarter. But the long holiday season in April, combined with weakening markets contributed to a softening of demand as the year has progressed.

Hiring continues to be slightly more strongly focused on Emerging Markets and High Yield, and there has also been a slight pick‐up in demand for Product Managers. Multi‐Asset, 'go‐anywhere' style total return investing means that demand for experience in derivatives and trading in macro indices is relatively strong. Demand for traditional Rates (in particular, UK) and Investment Grade Credit has weakened.

There are some signs that the holiday season delayed the completion of hiring that would otherwise have been reported in May, so we expect that there will be a slight increase in announced hiring over the next couple of months with some significant hires still in the pipeline.

Despite this we do not see any signs of a sharp improvement in sentiment, so we would expect this year to continue weakly. To put the current demand in context, it has been slightly lower than the first six months of 2009 following the market crash, hence at record low levels.

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Some noteable senior hires this year have been:

In April:

• Roman Gaiser joins **Pictet Asset Management* as Head of High Yield.
• Stephen Snowden joins Aegon Asset Management as Head of Retail Fixed Income.
• Thomas Kwan joins Baring Asset Management as Head of Asian Debt.

In March:

• Andreas Sanchez Balcazar joins Pictet Asset Management as co&hphen;Head of Global Fixed Income.
• Karan Chadha joins ** ACPI Investment Managers as Head of Specialist Credit.

In February:

• Danny McKeranan joins Scottish Widows Investment Partnership as Head of UK & European Credit.
• Daniel James joins Aviva Investors as Head of Global Aggregate & Absolute Return Fixed Income.

In January:

• Guillermo Osses joins HSBC Global Asset Management as Head of Emerging Markets Fixed Income.
• Sven Richter joins Renaissance Investment Management as Head of Frontier Markets.

For more detailed information on Hiring trends in Fixed Income, please call Rupert Reed on 020 7183 8864.

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