Jefferies Group Inc. has hired no less than seven UBS bankers in the past two months. Many of the new hires come from the Hong Kong division of UBS and follows the hiring of Ren Wang to be the company’s Asia president. Wang will start in Hong Kong next week.
People with knowledge of the matter said two executive directors at UBS, Ronald Tam and Dai Qiang, were hired as managing directors for the investment banking division. They are scheduled to begin working for Jefferies in the first half of December. Tam may also head Asia corporate finance.
Five other executives were hired for various positions ranging from senior vice president to analyst. In May, the company hired Sean Huang from UBS to head securities finance trading in the region.
Richard Khaleel, spokesman for Jefferies, declined to comment. Mark Panday, spokesman for UBS in Hong Kong, stated that the company would not comment on departures.
Jefferies is gradually expanding operations in Asia and is building up its equity sales, trading, and research businesses. Jefferies will focus on winning Chinese capital markets mandates and building leveraged finance business. The company also announced in June that it had won approval from Indian regulators to start equity research, sales, and trading operations in the country.
The company appointed Kunal Bajaj as head of India equity sales and Govind Chellappa as its research head. Jefferies will have 12 investment bankers in Hong Kong once everyone is on board and the Hong Kong division and India division will have about 30 bankers in total.
Jefferies’ stock has declined 61 percent this year on speculation that losses on European debt will sink the firm. Job losses in the global financial services industry for 2011 are close to 200,000 and many companies have been eliminating jobs to reduce costs, making Jefferies one of the few bright spots of hiring in the industry.
