ESG recruitment stays strong

Like several other firms, the Spanish bank created a dedicated environmental, social and governance solutions team recently, picking an insider, Steffen Kram, to lead it.

Now the bank has taken the next step in building the team, appointing a head of sustainable capital markets, Victoria Land, who has worked in similar roles previously at HSBC and Crédit Agricole.

GlobalCapital reported in June on the growing number of ESG specialists working in capital markets at banks. In the past, these were often debt capital markets bankers who had gained experience by handling some of the earliest green bonds and gradually become their institution’s in-house expert.

These days, ESG capital markets leaders are more likely to be hired in from a rival firm and less likely to have been DCM bankers in the past. Land exemplifies both of these trends, having started out as an ESG investment analyst at Fidelity International before moving to the sell side at HSBC.

And it’s not just at investment banks that the ESG talent market is hotting up. Earlier this year, HSBC Asset Management lost its head of responsible investment, Melissa McDonald, after she was hired away for a position outside of the asset management industry.

HSBC AM has taken the opportunity to reorganise its sustainability team, creating a sustainability office in London and promoting from within to replace McDonald as head of responsible investment, as it prepares to embark on a hiring spree targeting ESG experts. CVs at the ready!

Banks have increasingly been hiring from ESG ratings and analytics firms, but the traffic is not all one way. HSBC’s group head of sustainable finance, Daniel Klier, resigned in February to join ESG fintech company Arabesque.

 

Citi has bolstered its European investment banking business recently with senior appointments in Milan and London.

The Italian hire is Christian Montaudo, formerly of UBS, who is joining Citi as head of investment banking in the country in October. He is stepping into the shoes of Leopoldo Attolico, who is moving into a vice-chairman role.

In London, meanwhile, the US bank has tapped prominent insurance coverage banker Mike Lamb as chairman of global insurance. With 25 years of experience, Lamb is well known in insurance M&A, especially in the UK. He joins Citi from Barclays and also worked at Deutsche Bank for several years.

 

In Paris, Agence France Trésor is set to have a new chief executive, with Anthony Requin stepping down to become France’s inspector general of finance. Replacing him as of August 1 is his deputy, Cyril Rousseau, who has been with the French treasury since 2004.

 

James Sadler, who was until recently Bank of America’s head of Middle East and North Africa debt capital markets in Dubai, is making a brand new start of it in old New York, having relocated there to join the US financial institutions DCM team as a director.

Elsewhere in the Big Apple, Rothschild has hired Timothy Lufkin from Truist to cover financial sponsors.