Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment's (CIB) head of structured products strategy for its global markets division, Romuald Orange, has left the bank.
Orange will be replaced by Jacques Cohen, who is currently a trader involved in the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) program in Hong Kong, and is being relocated in London to take over part of Orange's role. Cohen will report to Samy Beji, global head of structuring at Credit Agricole CIB, in London. Orange is understood to be on gardening leave and his next destination is unknown. Orange was appointed head of structured products strategy in 2014 and was working on the redeployment of the structured products for the bank.
A senior source at CACIB said the bank has been focusing on rebuilding its structured products capabilities over the last couple of years. "We never stopped issuing products indexed to certain underlyings such as rates said the CACIB's official. "But it's fair to say that 2014 saw an acceleration of our structured product offering with additions such as the bond repack platform and secured funding which was successful."
This redeployment has been done based on four core principles including putting client needs at the heart of the bank's "product development philosophy"; diversifying across asset classes and technology "to avoid dependency and excessive leverage"; giving compliance, legal, and operational aspects "the same importance as trading and risk management capabilities"; and leveraging on the experience gained through the bank's "legacy management such as models, market liquidity, accumulation risk, and staff experience".
CACIB has focused its structured products issuance around its CLN business with vanilla products and "gradually expanded to more complex CLNs". As a result, issuance has grown by more than 50% from 2011 to 2012 and by a further 10% year on year since then. The bank's repack platform has also experienced a strong development in 2014 and 2015, with the volume of issuance growing by more than 70% year-on-year, said the source.
Prior to being appointed head of structured products strategy in 2014, Orange was chief operating officer, equity derivatives at the bank for two years, and played a key role in defining the bank's strategy and alternative scenarios as it outsourced its equity derivatives positions to BNP Paribas which acted as external partner. Orange joined Credit Agricole CIB in 2010 as head of product specialist team, flow & delta one - global equity derivatives (GED) and moved to Hong Kong a year after as head of flow & delta one for equity derivatives, Asia.
Previously, Orange worked at HSBC where he spent over ten years in a number of senior roles in France including local head of delta one and equity finance within HSBC's financial products division; co-head of equity finance desk; as well as senior equity finance trader and senior stock loan trader at the bank's global banking and markets.
Orange also spent four years at BNP Paribas in senior roles in securities lending, exchange-traded funds (ETF) and prime brokerage, including head of stock lending in Frankfurt within the bank's securities services team in Frankfurt.
Credit Agricole announced in 2011 a plan to withdraw from 'certain activities' including equity derivatives and commodities derivatives in a move to re-focus its strategy following €2.5bn write-downs related to its corporate and investment banking division. In 2013, the French bank agreed to transfer the administrative and operational management of its €12.5bn portfolio of equity derivatives notional to BNP Paribas Global Equities and Commodity Derivatives (GECD) from January 2014 in order to ensure the continuity of service for investors in these products, including redemptions, secondary market, valuations, reporting and client relationships.
The bank however still offers structured solutions and equity financings through its Strategic Equity Transactions business.
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