ABN Amro and Société Générale have done away with their dedicated European high-yield desks. Spokespeople at both firms say the desks have been integrated into other areas of their fixed-income businesses and emphasized that their firms were not out of the high-yield business.
ABN has rolled its high-yield business into its London-based leveraged finance unit. Heading the new unit will be Michiel Schwartz in the newly created role of global head of leveraged finance. Schwartz was ABN's country representative in Russia. He will report to Huibert Boumeester, global head of sub-investment grade origination, says Alex Evans, an ABN spokesman. Vincent Keith will remain ABN's head of high-yield trading. An ABN high-yield trader says there are approximately 10 traders, salespeople and analysts on the London high-yield desk. Evans said no redundancies were planned.
Laetitia Maurel, SocGen's spokeswoman, says the three members of the firm's high-yield desk--a trader, a salesperson and an analyst--were cut in London and responsibility for covering the asset class has been assumed by the investment-grade desk.
A trader at a rival firm discounted the impact of the moves. "We never saw these guys. They're not players at all," says the head of high-yield trading at another firm. "It's not like when [Bear Stearns] closed its desk, you saw [the effect on the market] right away," he says.