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Global Markets
Secondary-market sales and trading across equities, derivatives, prime brokerage, quant and exotic desks, and FICC.
The secondary market
Global markets here is the secondary market: the desks that price, distribute, and finance a book after issuance. Equities is the product most candidates, and most clients, spend their time in. That is how the market is staffed. It is not a ranking of this practice.
A mandate may be cash equities, equity derivatives, prime brokerage, a quant or exotic desk, or a FICC franchise in rates, credit, or foreign exchange. A markets business is not one desk. The cash book, the delta-one and swaps book, the warrants and structured-product book, the financing around a client's positions, and the FICC books sit beside each other. They are staffed as related seats, not as one general hire.
Sales is coverage of the accounts: long-only, hedge funds, official institutions, and private banks. Trading is the book itself: risk, inventory, and the price shown to the client. A strong salesperson who has never run risk is not a trader. The reverse is also true.
The house, and the desk
The kind of brokerage matters as much as the product. A full-service investment bank, a regional brokerage, an agency or electronic house, and a prime broker do not hire the same person. The mandate names the house, the product, the client set, and the market.
- Cash equities: sales and trading of listed stock, including blocks and the institutional franchise.
- Delta-one and derivatives: swaps, futures, and the hedge against a cash book.
- Exotics and structured products: barriers, autocallables, warrants, and variance, including what a private-bank franchise sells.
- Prime brokerage: stock borrow, synthetic prime, margin, collateral, and the capital extended to a hedge fund.
- Quant and electronic: systematic execution, electronic market-making, and model-driven books, where the seat is research and engineering as well as a limit.
- FICC: rates, credit flow, and foreign exchange, each run as its own franchise.
How a search is taken
The people sought already run a book or a franchise. Coverage runs across Asia Pacific, North America, and the United Kingdom, one instruction at a time. The employer is not named on the page.