Sector developments and company hires

CS duo snapped up
Financial services firm Baird has expanded its fixed income offering with the addition of two ex-Credit Suisse professionals focusing on CLOs and securitised products. James Gray and Daniel Bates join the firm’s London office respectively as md, European fixed income sales and director, European fixed income trader.

Gray was previously executive director, securitised products sales at Credit Suisse and led the rebuilding of its public side client franchise across Europe and re-established its European securitised products salesforce. Prior to that, he was a member of JPMorgan’s European securitised products, CLO and illiquids syndicate and head of European ABS syndicate at Deutsche Bank.

Bates most recently supported the development of Credit Suisse’s European CLO trading business as CLO trader. Before that, he served as a junior portfolio manager at both Spire Partners and WyeTree Asset Management, where he managed investments in European CLOs and European and US ABS.

In other news…

EMEA
Natixis has recruited Charles Toutain as an ABS/CLO trader, based in Paris. Toutain previously spent almost a decade at AXA Investment Managers, where he served as an ABS/CLO/ILS trader since 2017 and was a derivatives analyst before that.

SMBC Nikko Capital Markets has appointed Ian Willis as head of EMEA ABS/CLO trading, based in London. He was previously a CLO trader at Jefferies, which he joined in September 2009. Before that, Willis worked at Barclays and Lehman Brothers as a CMBS trader and at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein as an ABS trader.

North America
BNP Paribas has promoted its existing head of US CLO structuring and warehousing to md. Alexandra Middleton will step up to the role, having climbed the ranks to become head of US CLO structuring in 2020. Middleton will continue to be based in the firm’s New York office, where she has been since she joined as an analyst in credit structuring in July 2012.