Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is continuing its hiring spree in the US, this time picking up David Odenath who will sell the firm's equity- and rate-linked structured products into the US private and trust banking networks. Odenath previously worked at Deutsche Asset Management selling to large US-based trust companies and private banks.
In his new role Odenath reports directly to Donald Dye, MD and head of US retail and high net worth sales financial products in RBC's New York office. According to Dye, Odenath's appointment will help RBC in its quest to strengthen and build-out the global equity-linked products and structured rates business which is housed within the RBC Capital Markets unit.
Dye himself joined RBC just this past May, replacing former MD Laurence Kaplan who left months earlier and had been with RBC since 2002. Dye, who previously spent 12 years at Morgan Stanley in various executive roles and had, more recently, founded a company providing asset management services to soccer professionalism, reports to Ali Salahuddin who serves as RBC's head of global equity-linked products.
Since the start of the year RBC has made eight senior hires for its structured products team. These include Anik Khambhla, MD and head of US structured rates trading who had served as head of options trading at Bank of America, as well as Manav Sharma, director in RBC's structured rates trading business who also worked at Bank of America and reports to Khambhla. Also new to the team is former UBS equity derivatives salesman and structurer Simon Boutros who joined RBC as a product structurer, Antti Pihlaja, MD and head of quantitative modelling who joined from Scotia Capital, and Scott McBurney, MD who is the head of Canadian sales and marketing and had worked at Merrill Lynch.
According to the SRP database, year-to-date through 29 September, RBC has sold 753 structured products and raised more than $1.2bn, nearly 48% more in sales volume than 2009 and 150% more than 2008's sales total of $492m. RBC's sales represent a 4% market share of the $39bn in sales so far in 2010. The firm is in second place in terms of issuance, a distant second to Barclays Capital, which has sold 2,116 products, and just ahead of JPMorgan which has sold 736 structured products to date.