With larger investment banks pulling resources from fixed income teams, brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald is remaining aggressive. The New York firm hired two foreign exchange sales and trading execs this week and has signaled that it’s willing and able to add more talent in the coming months.
On Monday, Cantor announced that it had poached to FX executives from Goldman Sachs: James Pinto, who was named a managing director within the group, and Stephan McElreath, a vice-president.
Their boss, James Reilly, global head of FX, told us that Cantor will look to continue expanding the firm’s footprint in FX trading.
“The goal is to be a significant player in FX and as our business grows and evolves over time that will most certainly involve additions to staffing, a more diversified client base and tailored product set,” Reilly told us.
Cantor has made headlines over the years as it gravitates toward hot businesses or ones that larger banks are forced to deemphasize. Cantor Chief Executive Shawn Matthews has made it clear that the firm will look to take advantage as larger players with more regulatory burdens walk away from fixed income.
Other banks have been doing some incremental hiring in FX, like Citi recently naming Danny Wise as its European head of G-10 spot foreign exchange trading, but much of the additions are backfills for empty seats created by the global FX manipulation scandal that has seen more than 30 traders fired or suspended. HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Citi, Barclays and others have lost staff to the scandal, and will likely slowly re-fill the seats as the investigation moves forward.
Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerald is also dipping its toe in burgeoning areas like asset and wealth management, mostly through acquisitions. With four acquisitions in the last 18 months, Cantor now controls roughly $3 billion in assets.
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