Barclays continue hiring spree in Japan

ASIA   RECRUITMENT JAPAN  BARCLAYS

Japan - Barclays Bank will expand its Japanese equities operations with additional senior hires by September this year.

Barclays, which had recruited about 100 people from Lehman Brothers after it started equities and investment banking operations in Japan in October, plans to hire more as part of its expansion plans. The bank aims to add ten equity sales and trading staff in Tokyo, London and New York by September 30, said an unnamed source who was familiar with the plan.

"It makes sense that Barclays is doing this when the power structure among global banks in Japan is changing," said Hisakazu Amano of Tokyo-based T&D Asset Management. "There is an opportunity here because Japanese companies are increasingly raising funds globally."

Barclays had hired ten senior staff in Japan earlier this year to head various functions such as electronic sales trading and equity liquidity strategy. Hires were mainly from its rivals including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group.

Barclays also said in March it planned to double investment banking staff in Japan as rivals Citigroup, Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC and UBS cut back. Its co-head of investment banking Hideaki Sunaga had said the bank aims to increase headcount from 40 to about 80 over two years.

The European bank joins Standard Chartered and Julius Baer, which had given positive signals on their hiring strategies as they stick to their expansion plans in Asia despite the financial crisis.