Bank of America's EMEA equity derivatives business is getting some love

efinancialcareers.com:

Bank of America may be cutting a few heads and keeping a lid on costs by failing to replace people who've left, but it's hiring too. Last year, it recruited 15,000 people, including many in European fixed income sales, where it doubled the size of the currency and commodities salesforce working with corporate clients in the two years to mid-2023 and hired 50% more staff across EMEA sales and trading.

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In 2024, it seems that BofA might moving on. Now, it's all aboutequities instead. 

Speaking to International Financing Review, Jim De Mare, the nice but competitive guy upscaling BofA's markets business, said that the bank is 'earlier' in its equities investments than its fixed income investments and that it has room to grow in EMEA equity derivatives trading and structured notes. 

BofA has already made some big equities hires. In September 2023, Nick Laux joined from Morgan Stanley as international head of equities trading. Matt Watson, Vincent Charvin and Maxime Ménard joined from Citi, Goldman Sachs and SocGen as global head of structured issuance, head of delta one sales for EMEA and head of Emea X-Asset third-party distribution sales respectively around the same time. Laux's arrival in particular looks like a step-up: insiders say there was no specific head of international equities trading at BofA before he joined and that the business was effectively run by Philippe Trouve out of Paris.

However, there were also various exits last year: Sasha Diklich, the bank's head of micro derivatives trading in London left after 10 years in August, along with Rafael Oskoui; various other senior people also left the EMEA equities business in May.  

While Jim De Mare runs Bank of