Jonas Klink joined UBS in London on Tuesday as head of European government bond, SSA and covered bond trading.
He reports to Mark Tinworth, global head of credit flow and rates, and will trade covered and SSA bonds, while overseeing the bank's European government bond trading, which is done in Frankfurt.
He joined the Swiss shop after almost four years at Citi where he was head of covered, SSA and illiquid rates trading. He has also held trading jobs at Barclays, Santander and Commerzbank.
It is understood that in hiring Klink, UBS is pursuing its strategy of adding seasoned professionals to trade certain macro products that it believes will perform well and where it can align trading activity with other parts of its business.
The bank hired Drew Goldman from Goldman Sachs to run its US credit trading business last summer, for example, and it is thought that it will further augment its trading team in coming months with more senior hires as well as moving juniors within the firm.
UBS's covered bond book has not been actively traded since Jonas Offenhammer left the bank in 2018 to be a covered bond trader at Santander. In the primary market, UBS ranked 15th as a bookrunner for covered bonds in euros last year.
The bank shut its SSA debt capital markets business, which is run separately to trading, in 2012 and although it is understood there is no change in strategy to revive it, it remains active in some areas of the market. It has been a bookrunner on Australian dollar deals for both the EIB and Australian Capital Territory in the last two weeks, for example.
Citi declined to comment on its plans to replace Klink.