Barclays Global Investors, a unit of British bank Barclays Plc, hired former Merrill Lynch’s Kurt Weisenfluh as head of mortgage trading in the United States.
Mr. Weisenfluh has been director of pass-through mortgage trading at Merrill Lynch since 2007. Prior to that, he worked at Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Smith Barney.
Mr. Weisenfluh will be based in San Francisco and will report to Chip Stevens, head of U.S. fixed income trading. Barclays Global Investors has $1.5 trillion of assets under management.
Barclays May Follow RBS
Barclays Plc, the U.K.’s third- largest bank, may follow Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc in exchanging bonds to boost capital.
“All U.K. institutions are in a position to restructure their liabilities,” London-based Barclays said in an e-mailed statement today. “Barclays actively manages its balance sheet and is always alert to what is happening in the market.”
RBS today offered to exchange or buy back $13.5 billion ($20 billion) of bonds, and Lloyds yesterday offered to exchange more than 7.5 billion pounds of bonds into senior unsecured debt to bolster their financial strength. Barclays has about 34 billion pounds of non-equity capital, Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Jonathan Pierce wrote in a note to investors today.
By: Thomson Reuter and Bloomberg
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