The head of market structure and regulatory reform at Morgan Stanley is set to join the US investment bank’s rival Goldman Sachs in a similar role next month.
A spokesperson at Goldman Sachs confirmed that Eleanor Beasley will join the equities execution team as an executive director and European head of market structure and regulatory strategy.
Beasley will report to co-head of electronic execution in Europe at Goldman Sachs, David Cornish, but her role will expand beyond the Goldman electronic trading business to include all execution services and channels.
After almost 15 years with Morgan Stanley having first joined the firm in 2004, Beasley departed in October last year. Prior to her time at Morgan Stanley, Beasley also spent just over a year as an analyst for the London Stock Exchange Group.
Her appointment at Goldman Sachs forms part of the bank’s efforts to ensure it helps clients and the business navigate evolving market structure and regulatory environment, which has changed rapidly under MiFID II in Europe.
Equities client execution throughout 2018 helped Goldman Sachs increase net revenues across its equities business by 15% year-on-year to $7.6 billion, according to its full year results posted earlier this month. Goldman said that commissions and fees were higher due to increased volatility and client activity in 2018 compared to the year prior.
David Solomon, who took over as chief executive at Goldman Sachs in September following Lloyd Blankfien’s decision to retire, commented that the bank saw stronger top and bottom line results on 2018 despite the difficult market-making backdrop in the second half of the year.
“For the year, we delivered double-digit revenue growth, the highest earnings per share in the firm’s history and the strongest return on equity since 2009,” Soloman added. “We are confident that we are well positioned to support an even larger universe of clients, continue to diversify our revenue mix and deliver strong returns for our shareholders in the years ahead.”