Griffin originally joined Kepler in 2016 as its head of portfolio and electronic sales trading, later assuming his most recent role as head of market structure and liquidity solutions in 2022. He has an extensive trading career, joining the industry in 1999 as a product controller at Credit Suisse before moving into a series of arbitrage trading roles at Stafford Trading Europe and Nomura Securities.

Stephen Wilkes, the head of buy-side solutions sales and head of securities services at Deutsche Bank, will be departing his role after spending almost 13 years at the bank.  For nearly five years, Wilkes served as the head of buy-side solutions sales and head of securities services sales in the EMEA region. In addition to his role in buy-side solutions, Wilkes also led the sales team responsible for distributing the Deutsche Bank custody platform across the EMEA region for the corporate bank. 

Prior to his tenure at Deutsche Bank, Wilkes spent six years at JP Morgan as an executive director of futures and options and OTC clearing sales. Before that, he served as vice president and relationship manager for JP Morgan’s priority asset manager clients. Wilkes began his career as an account manager at Targetbase Claydon Heeley and also held a senior analyst position at Goldman Sachs. 

Jefferies appointed Peter Johansson as an equity sales trader. Before joining Jefferies, Johansson spent a decade at Nordea Markets, most recently as managing director, head of equity execution. Elsewhere in his tenure at Nordea Markets, Johansson held a sales trading position. Before joining Nordea Markets, Johansson held senior positions at SEB Enskilda Equities, Neonet Securities and HSBC.

The post People Moves Monday: ODDO BHF, Deutsche Bank and Jefferies appeared first on The TRADE.

He joins as head of execution sales and microstructure.

Griffin left Kepler in May after over eight years with the broker dealer. He is currently on gardening leave set to join ODDO in the coming months, The TRADE understands.

“I’m really looking forward to joining the team at ODDO BHF and continuing to build a best-in-class execution business,” Griffin told The TRADE.

Griffin originally joined Kepler in 2016 as its head of portfolio and electronic sales trading, later assuming his most recent role as head of market structure and liquidity solutions in 2022.

He has an extensive trading career, joining the industry in 1999 as a product controller at Credit Suisse before moving into a series of arbitrage trading roles at Stafford Trading Europe and Nomura Securities.

He later took on a role as a director of execution sales trading at Barclays Capital in 2004, going on to serve in a similar capacity at Curzon Securities and as head of equities and transaction products at Thomson Reuters before joining Kepler.

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Commerzbank has outsourced its equity research and brokerage divisions to Franco-German financial services firm ODDO BHF under its radical restructure plans.

Under terms of the agreement, OBBO BHF will be the sole partner of Commerzbank for its equity brokerage and research, which the investment bank confirmed it would no longer be providing in-house.

In February, Commerzbank said it will shut down its equity sales trading business as part of a major restructure that will include the loss of up to 10,000 jobs by 2024.

Known as Strategy 2024, the ambitious restructure plans by Commerzbank aim to gain cost savings of €1.4 billion by 2024 with the jobs cut and the closure of 30% of its business locations globally.

“We have decided on ODDO BHF as a partner because this financial services group will contribute a high level of expertise in equity sales and trading for markets in Europe and North America,” said Michael Kotzbauer, member of the board of directors and responsible for corporate clients at Commerzbank. 

“This will enable us to create a significantly greater bandwidth for our corporate clients in equity market transactions and we will be able to ensure even better placement for them.” 

Commerzbank said it will remain as the first contact partner for its corporate clients under the terms of the agreement.

The development marks one of the first major sell-side outsourced trading agreements. Outsourced trading has predominantly been used by asset managers and buy-side firms to reduce costs.

According to a report from Northern Trust last year, demand for outsourced trading services from the buy-side has increased significantly recently as many firms looked to alleviate operational pressure brought on by the pandemic.

The white paper highlighted how a ‘fourth wave’ of outsourcing had been instigated by accelerated challenges faced by firms during the pandemic including pressure from competition, fees, regulatory and compliance challenges, technology costs, and shifting product demand.

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