Banc of America Securities announces two senior hires to its European Structured Products and Risk Management groups

LONDON – Banc of America Securities has announced the appointments of Edward Charles as European head of Global Structured Products Structuring and Ashwin Kumar as European head of Interest Rate Derivatives Trading.

Edward Charles joins Banc of America Securities after five years at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) in London where until most recently he was head of Tax and Credit Structuring. In this position Charles ran the tax-related Structured Product group for Europe and the Emerging Markets, plus the European Credit and Insurance Structuring group. In 2001 he was appointed head of the European Strategic Transactions group, in addition to his role as head of Emerging Markets Tax Structuring. Prior to this Charles spent eleven years at JP Morgan latterly as head of Structured Products in London which included tax, securitisation and credit derivatives products.

At Banc of America Securities, Charles will be based in London as head of Global Structured Products (GSP) Structuring for Europe, with responsibility for coordinating the origination and execution of credit, tax overlay, repackaging and pension/insurance products. He will be part of the GSP European management team and will report to Arrington Mixon, head of Debt Capital Raising and Risk Management for Europe and to Allen Shifflet and Sai Raman, global co-heads of Structuring for GSP.

According to Arrington Mixon, “We are continuing to build on our top tier position in Global Structured Products and expand our product reach in Europe. Charles's experience across multiple disciplines will allow us to provide clients with solutions encompassing appropriate credit risk appetite, tax treatment and capital utilisation.”

Ashwin Kumar joins Banc of America Securities after two years at Commerzbank Securities in New York where he was head of USD Interest Rate Trading. In this position Kumar managed the USD Interest Rate Trading business including proprietary, plain vanilla and exotic interest rate derivatives, treasury and agency trading. Prior to this Kumar was a portfolio manager at NWI Management LP in New York responsible for macro and relative value trading in fixed income and currency markets. Before this he spent eight and a half years trading commodity and fixed income options at CSFB, Citibank and Phillip Brothers.

At Banc of America Securities, Kumar will be based in London as a managing director and European head of Interest Rate Derivatives Trading with responsibility for market-making and proprietary trading in non-structured interest rate derivatives in Europe, and European Government bond trading. He will report to Arrington Mixon and to John Kapustiak, global head of Interest Rate Derivatives Trading, who is based in Chicago.

“Banc of America Securities has a proven track record of building a market-making and proprietary trading business,” comments Arrington Mixon. “Ashwin’s appointment will allow us to continue to expand and devote the necessary resources to the interest rate business in Europe and we are delighted to welcome him on board.”