Clay Desjardine is leaving his position as head of secondary sales and trading at Deutsche Bank later this year. Desjardine declined to comment and referred questions to a Deutsche Bank spokesman, who confirmed he is leaving. Steve Snizek, director and head of par loan trading for Deutsche Bank in London, will step into the breach and return to a desk he left in 2000. Snizek confirmed that he will be replacing Desjardine. Deutsche Bank is said to be working on a replacement for the London spot. Market participants said Desjardine is leaving to go to Vancouver, but further details of his plans could not be determined. Snizek is set to take over a desk that is considered very strong in distressed, but has become less influential in par over the past few years. In the 2004 LMW best trading desk, Deutsche Bank slipped to sixth in par. It was second in par as recently as 2002. One portfolio manager who frequently trades with Deutsche Bank said the desk really only concentrates on its own names.
Replacing Desjardine internally will not come as a surprise to some in the market, who have noted that demand for senior traders is high while supply is limited. This is evidenced by Goldman Sachs’s attempt to attract Peter Lapina to its par loan trading operations (LMW, 4/19). “They’ve seen what happened with Goldman. Goldman tried to get Lapina and couldn’t. Getting a senior [trader] is different,” a source familiar with the situation said.
Snizek went to London in August 2000 having worked on Deutsche Bank’s U.S. par loan trading desk. In London he is responsible for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and his focus is on the trading of leveraged, investment-grade, telecom and project finance loans.