Credit Suisse taps Deutsche’s McGuire amid equities revamp

Bloomberg

Credit Suisse Group AG, the Swiss lender struggling to improve performance at its stock-trading unit, replaced one of the business’s top European bankers with a senior executive from Deutsche Bank AG.
Stuart McGuire, who runs Deutsche Bank’s client-execution strategy for equities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, will replace Daniel Kaye as Credit Suisse’s head of cash-equities trading and sales trading for the same region, according to staff memos obtained Wednesday by Bloomberg. Adam Bradbery, a spokesman for the Zurich-based lender, confirmed the memos’ contents.
Credit Suisse Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam has pledged to bolster the bank’s stock-trading business while pulling back from bond trading as part of an overhaul designed to cut risk, boost profit and meet tougher capital rules. Still, revenue from the business tumbled 22 percent in the first quarter to 722 million Swiss francs ($717 million), among the worst performances posted by a global lender, following a similar decline for all of 2016, company reports show.
Kaye, who is leaving Credit Suisse after 19 years, is the latest senior manager in the bank’s stock-trading business to depart. Thiam has hired UBS Group AG’s Mike Stewart, who will replace equities head Mike Paliotta. Stephen Dainton, head of the business for Europe, left earlier this year, Bloomberg reported in January. Credit Suisse shares slipped 0.2 percent at 11:14 a.m. in Zurich, paring this year’s gains to 7.9 percent.

Global Markets
Revenue from cash equities at Credit Suisse’s global markets unit, which covers the Americas and EMEA regions excluding Switzerland, was higher in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the bank said last month. The business dipped in the fourth quarter “due to a decline in EMEA trading volumes,” Credit Suisse said in a report.
In Asia, the Swiss bank is planning to cut as many as 35 positions from the equities business by June, people familiar with the matter said this week. Equities trading revenue dropped 16 percent in Asia-Pacific in the quarter, stung by a slump in derivatives sales.
McGuire leaves a business also struggling to improve stock-trading performance. Revenue from Deutsche Bank’s equities business tumbled 25 percent last year to $2.8 billion, the second-worst result on a dollar basis among global lenders after Credit Suisse, and fell another 13 percent in the first quarter of this year.
“Stuart’s track record of running highly successful equities trading and sales businesses, developing client franchises and generating new sales opportunities means he is ideally placed to lead this business function at Credit Suisse,” Paliotta and Nas Al-Khudairi, head of EMEA cash equities, wrote in the memo.
In September, Deutsche Bank promoted Ashley Wilson to a new role overseeing stock trading for the EMEA region. CEO John Cryan is carrying out a plan to improve the Frankfurt-based firm’s financial strength and shore up profitability, which included slashing 2016 bonuses for many senior bankers.
The departure of McGuire follows other exits from Deutsche Bank’s investment-banking unit. Piyush Gupta, who covered Asian technology companies from Singapore, is leaving the firm after 12 years, two people with knowledge of the matter said.