There's been a mad dash for talent as Wall Street firms quickly overhauled their 2020 playbooks.
Equity and debt trading have surged as a result of the financial turmoil caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Hedge fund managers are responding to investors' expectations to outperform amid the chaos by aggressively hiring experts to fine-tune their strategies.
While many banks pledged not to cut jobs during the pandemic, it is expected those guarantees will wear off soon. While upper-middle-management roles might be at risk, firms are likely to want to hold on to senior executives and bankers in hopes of an eventual rebound in business.
The upheaval of normal life due to the pandemic has also put a huge focus on digitalization, accelerating plans for firms across industries to upgrade or build out new tech.
Here's a roundup of some of the biggest appointments, exits, and hiring initiatives across the world of finance:
Trading
Trader moves have been happening left and right.
Bank of America has poached a top junk-bond trader from Deutsche Bank, leveling up in one of 2020's red-hot trading markets
Goldman Sachs just hired Kurt Hoffman, an expert in distressed situations and bankruptcy, to join a trading unit known for some of the bank's most lucrative deals
RBC is snapping up key hires in distressed-credit trading as Wall Street preps for a feeding frenzy
Morgan Stanley hired a top trader away from Deutsche Bank in distressed credit — an area primed for a boom as corporate debt gets crushed
Banking
Banks have been busy hiring for different initiatives, from chief marketing officers to teams to build out tech projects. Dealmakers have also reshuffled to lean into hot coverage areas.
Wells Fargo's longtime CMO will leave her role as part of a bigger marketing shakeup across the bank
Hedge funds
There's been a shuffle of quant leadership in at big-name shops in recent months, as firms rethink their data plays while the markets are upside down. They're also hiring in hot areas like bond trading.
Leaked memo: Billionaire Steve Cohen is hiring a former PDT executive who founded a flying-car startup to be his top quant and lead his Cubist unit
$33 billion Citadel just poached an AQR exec for a new leadership role to supercharge billionaire Ken Griffin's bond trading team
$7 billion hedge fund WorldQuant is bringing on the former top quant at Goldman to help create the 'future of quantitative investing'
Citadel just poached Two Sigma's data chief for its tech team — and it's the latest sign of how aggressively the $30 billion firm is pursuing top talent from Wall Street and Silicon Valley
2 portfolio managers featured in 'The Big Short' are set to join the new hedge fund being set up by Steve Cohen's former right-hand man
Wealth
Wells Fargo has been shaking up its wealth management leadership team, including finding a new head who previously oversaw JP Morgan's adviser unit.
Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf just hired another JPMorgan alum — this time, to run wealth management. Here's how Jamie Dimon's one-time protege has been building up his team.
A veteran Wells Fargo Advisors exec who helped navigate sweeping regulatory changes to the wealth industry just retired
Wells Fargo is moving a wealth exec into its scandal-plagued consumer bank to fill a new 'accountability' role as it seeks to appease regulators
Wealth management giant Merrill Lynch wants its worst-performing markets to catch up and just created a new role to oversee their progress
Cloud providers
Google and IMB have been bringing on Wall Street talent in order to attract more clients from the finance sector to their cloud services.
Google Cloud just poached a long-time Citi exec. Here's why public-cloud giants keep adding Wall Street veterans to their ranks.
IBM's new head of cloud says there's a $1 trillion opportunity in luring Wall Street firms and other holdouts onto the public cloud. Here's his plan to take on AWS, Google, and Microsoft.
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