Amid all the gloom and the news of job cuts at a number of investment banks, Jefferies has continued its Asia hiring spree with four new managing directors: Marcus Okuno, Chua Lee Leng, Lisa Lau and Conor O’Mara.
Okuno has joined in equity sales, based in Tokyo. He was most recently at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he spent 13 years. He has also worked at Robertson Stephens and Salomon Smith Barney.
Chua has joined in equity sales and trading, based in Singapore. She has 17 years of experience and was last in regional equity sales at UBS. She has also worked at HSBC and Merrill Lynch.
Lau will be co-head of Hong Kong and China sales trading, based in Hong Kong. She also has 17 years of experience. Lau joins Jefferies from China International Capital Corporation where she spent seven years and was head of equity sales trading. During the earlier part of her career, she was at Societe Generale and Paribas.
And, finally, O’Mara also comes on board with 17 years of experience. He joins the Hong Kong equity sales and trading team, and was earlier running a long/short Asian technology book in Morgan Stanley’s strategic investment group. He has also worked at Balyasny Asset Management and in fund management at HSBC.
“The addition of these senior professionals is another step in the continued expansion of our global equities platform into Asia, a region which is incredibly important to our business,” said Jason Griffith, global head of equities at Jefferies, in a written statement.
Jefferies’ equities business provides research, sales and execution services across cash equities, electronic trading, equity derivatives, exchange traded funds, convertibles, prime brokerage and securities finance. The boutique US investment bank has more than 700 professionals in research, sales and trading across the US, Europe and Asia, including more than 250 research professionals covering over 1,300 companies globally.
