Credit Suisse First Boston has amalgamated its equity derivatives and fixed-income groups in Japan and installed Paul Kuo and Luc Pajot as co-heads. "This is part of a global integration," said Isamu Kajino, spokesman at the firm, noting that while the initiative began out of New York last year, it is now taking effect in Japan. Kajino declined to comment on the operation outside of Japan or the timeframe for the implementation. Previously, Kuo ran the fixed-income operation while Pajot looked after equity. With the new structure, Kuo is responsible for research, sales, and capital markets while Pajot will focus on trading. The duo will jointly oversee structuring activities. Kuo did not return calls and Pajot was on vacation.
"The rational for the structural change is to create a strong management team for our unified business in Japan and to seek synergies and cross-selling opportunities more effectively," said Kajino.
As co-heads of the securities division, the duo report to Brady Dougan, head of securities in New York, Paul Calello, Asia-Pacific chairman in Hong Kong and Susumu Omori, branch manager in Tokyo. Kajino declined to comment on their previous reporting lines.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein combined its debt and equities businesses in April and Morgan Stanley has recently done the same. A number of firms, including Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, have also established cross-product marketing groups.
"The old silo system peaked two-three years ago and all top firms have since been trying to minimize the amount of multi-coverage people for separate products," said Mark Pink, financial recruiter at TMJ NetSearch in Tokyo. He added, "Too many derivative-linked products have been developed recently that have never fit too easily into [the] old silo system, so it has to change."
