Bank of America’s equities business hired from Morgan Stanley, lost to Citi

Bank of America indicated in February that it wanted to build out its European equity derivatives business this year. Accordingly, it has just made a mid-level equity derivatives hire from Morgan Stanley. At the same time, though, it lost a senior equity researcher to Citi, where one of it former equities stars is now heading research globally.

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Agron Rexhaj, a vice president (VP) level hybrid exotics trader at Morgan Stanley in London, just joined Bank of America in the Citi. Rexhaj spent nearly seven years at Morgan Stanley after graduating from Imperial with a Masters in risk management and financial engineering in 2017. He’s the latest addition to BofA’s European equities business, which has been quietly staffing-up after adding Matt Watson from Citi as global head of structured issuance for equities, Maxime Menard, from SocGen as new head of EMEA X-Asset third party distribution sales, and Vincent Charvin from Goldman Sachs as EMEA head of delta one sales late last year.

Rexhaj’s arrival follows Jim De Mare’s proclamation that the bank is  ‘earlier’ in investing in its equities than its fixed income business, and that it has room to grow in EMEA equity derivatives trading and structured notes. 

While BofA adds in exotic equities, though, it’s just lost a senior analyst from its New York business to Citi. – Geoff Meacham, a senior analyst and managing director (MD) in the biotech and pharma business, is joining Citi to head healthcare research. Meacham will be working with Lucy Baldwin, the British woman heading Citi’s global research team who worked for BofA in London for three years to 2019. 

While Citi is cutting costs, it’s also hiring. During yesterday’s ‘services’ focused investor day, the bank said that it’s focused on improving its equities position (albeit mostly through growth in prime).

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