MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF)’s bankruptcy filing is throwing into question the futures of some of Wall Street’s most experienced bankers.
Jon Corzine, 64, who helped run Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) from 1994 to 1999, added about 800 employees as he tried to remake the broker into an investment bank. Recruits included Michael Stockman, UBS AG’s former chief risk officer for the Americas, Richard Moore, once Citigroup Inc. (C)’s head of European fixed-income, and Jon Bass, 49, also previously of UBS, where he was a member of the investment bank’s board.
MF Global sought bankruptcy protection yesterday within a week of Moody’s Investors Service cutting the New York-based firm’s credit rankings, reporting a record quarterly loss and disclosing $6.3 billion of wagers on the sovereign debt of some of Europe’s most indebted nations. The firm was one of the few on Wall Street adding staff amid about 120,000 layoffs announced by banks globally this year, according to Bloomberg Industries.
“No big banks are hiring,” said Michael Karp, chief executive officer of New York-based Options Group Inc., whose recruitment firm fielded calls yesterday from at least three senior business managers at MF Global who want to move their groups elsewhere. “It’s very tough to move them as a team.”
MF Global employed 2,870 people globally, according to a bankruptcy filing. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor who started at Goldman Sachs in 1975 on the bond desk, became MF Global’s chairman and chief executive officer in March 2010. He concentrated hiring in credit and curbed equity jobs in Europe and Asia, seeking to take advantage of firms that couldn’t gain a foothold in fixed-income. As recently as two weeks ago it added high-yield bond trader Drew Meany from BTIG LLC, where Bass also worked. Meany declined to comment.
‘Strategically Add’
“We are going to continue to strategically add and take advantage of talent in the market that’s additive to our firm and our business,” Bass, global head of institutional sales and fixed income, told Bloomberg News in a September interview.
MF Global hired Mark Jicka, former head of credit trading at Mizuho Securities USA Inc., and Steven Madsen, who led credit trading in the Americas at Societe Generale SA that month. In July, it said it brought on Christopher Belhumeur and Chris Lau to expand trading in structured products and commercial-mortgage backed securities.
While Corzine added staff, about 1,200 left as he attempted to transform the futures broker into a medium-sized investment bank by 2015. The board viewed Corzine’s 2011 performance as “exemplary,” in part for “significant improvements in the reputation of the firm as demonstrated by its ability to hire quality professionals,” according to a regulatory filing.
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