Traders Who Left Banks for Hedge Funds, Heading Back to Banks

Jon Government

Traders who fled banks for hedge funds are on their way back to Wall Street.
This month, Barclays Plc hired Chris Leonard, a founder of two hedge funds in the decade since he left JPMorgan Chase & Co., to turn around U.S. rates trading. At the end of last year, ex-bankers Roberto Hoornweg and Chris Rivelli, both of Brevan Howard Asset Management, left that London hedge fund for banks.
Recruiters say these moves and others aren’t just the usual attrition: banks in New York and London are interesting employers again a decade after the financial crisis, and may get involved in more proprietary trading if President Trump eases regulatory burdens. There’s also another factor: many macro funds just don’t make money anymore.
‘In the last quarter of the year or first quarter of 2018, you will find more people leaving the hedge funds to join banks to run proprietary money,’ said Jason Kennedy, chief executive officer of the Kennedy Group in London, which hires for banks and hedge funds. ‘The banks will become more attractive in terms of jobs and pay.’
That’s due to expectations that Donald Trump will be good for bankers. In a report released June 12, the U.S. Treasury Department urged federal agencies to re-write scores of regulations that Wall Street has frequently complained about in the seven years since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. They include adjusting the annual stress tests that assess whether lenders can endure economic downturns, loosening some trading rules and paring back the powers of the watchdog that polices consumer finance.

This post was published at bloomberg