The Royal Bank of Scotland has recruited industry veteran Jeremy Smart as global head of electronic distribution, as the UK state-owned bank prepares for growing automation of fixed income trading.
Smart joins RBS after a seven-year stint Morgan Stanley, where he was most recently head of fixed income e-commerce and global head of e-commerce sales. He has also spent seven years at Deutsche Bank in the role of senior salesperson responsible for the development and distribution of the bank’s Autobahn platform.
In his new London-based role, Smart will report to Fabian Shey, global head of prime service and client execution at RBS.
“Jeremy brings 16 years’ experience to this new role and will play a pivotal part in helping us achieve our ambitious goals for the future of our markets’ electronic trading offering,” said Shey. “He will partner with sales and trading in rates, credit, FX and futures in EMEA, Americas and APAC to grow our share of business over electronic channels.”
In addition to the OTC derivatives market, which will soon be subject to greater exchange trading, clearing and reporting obligations under forthcoming US and European legislation, fixed income is also set for a major overhaul that is expected to drive the market from voice-broked to electronic trading.
Basel III will place an obligation on banks to hold risk-weighted capital against the assets on their balance sheets, while the latest version of Europe’s MiFID will encourage electronic trading of bonds through the introduction of new venues called organised trading facilities and aim to establish pre- and post-trade transparency regimes similar to those already adopted in the equity markets.
RBS recently sold its corporate broking franchise Hoare Govett to US investment bank Jefferies. As part of the deal, a number of the RBS cash equities team moved over to Jefferies. RBS revealed in January that it would exit cash equities, corporate broking, equity capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions businesses as part of its restructuring plans initially announced in 2009.