Société Générale has hired Mark London as a managing director and head of U.S. debt structure and syndication. He will manage all of the debt structuring and syndication activities for the bank in the U.S., including both loan and high-yield bonds. He reports to Paolo Taddonio, head of debt finance in the Americas.
Separately, Neil Parekh, global head of high-yield finance, who was also named as head of the U.S. debt capital markets group in June, left the firm for personal reasons. A replacement has not yet been named.
London previously worked at ABN AMRO as a managing director running the leveraged finance group in the U.S. He left in 2005 and worked in non-profit before returning to finance. Before ABN he worked at JPMorgan for 17 years, leaving the bank as a managing director in its global syndicated finance group.
"I think one of the things that attracted me to SG was that it was incredibly focused on growing its platform," London said. "The fun part of the job is growing a business, those are the fun days...I was kind of longing for that kind of challenge and SG provides that challenge. To have a strong existing platform that is looking hard to grow, is a great opportunity."
Société Générale began ramping up its leveraged finance and lending effort last winter after more than a four-year absence from the U.S. marketplace (CIN, 1/13). In March, the bank hired Michael Finkelman from BNP Paribas to head the leveraged finance business. He reports to Powell Robinson, head of financing for the Americas, and to Rene de Laigue, head of leveraged and acquisition financing (3/31).
In June, it added two to its sales team; John Gorham joined as a director from UBS and Roxana Pechero joined as a v.p. from BNP. Both report to Terry Sanabria, managing director and head of loan sales and trading within the firm's U.S. debt capital markets group (6/30).
Currently there are about 20 individuals working on the syndication and high-yield teams and London anticipates hiring across the board at all levels. "The idea here is to continue to develop an integrated [platform]," he said.