JPMorgan's London repo traders are leaving now bonuses are banked
JPMorgan has lost two London repo traders, just below managing director level.
Sources say that both Charles Adams and Sarah Hargrove have left JPMorgan's London repo desk.
Adams was an executive director who was JPMorgan's head of EMEA credit repo trading and who managed a team trading "global SSA and European credit specials." He joined JPMorgan in 2011 and was in Paris with the bank between 2018 and 2024.
Hargrove joined JPMorgan in 2016 and has spent her career at JPMorgan in London, where she was a VP.
JPMorgan declined to comment, and Adams didn't respond to a request to comment. There are unconfirmed suggestions that despite not being managing directors (MDs) Hargrove and Adams were important members of JPMorgan's lucrative EMEA repo desk, and that both helped build the business during his tenure.
It's not clear where Adams is going next. Hedge fund Jain Global might seem likely, given that Vik Shah, JPMorgan's former co-head of European financials credit trading, with whom Adams worked in Paris, joined Jain in January. However, Adams is thought to be going elsewhere.
Hargrove is thought to have a new role, but is not moving with Adams. Both waited until 2024's bonuses were paid to resign. It's thought that disappointing bonuses contributed to their disapperance.
The $4 trillion repo market provides banks with overnight lending to finance trades. A repo transaction mostly begins with a dealer borrowing cash from a money market fund and lending it to a client, like a hedge fund. The borrower uses government bonds or other debt securities as collateral, and agree to repurchase them in the future at a pre-determined price. Given that hedge funds use repo borrowing to purchase treasuries for their big and controversial basis trades, the market is seen as a key source of systemic risk.
The functioning of the critical, complicated US repo market is illustrated in the chart below.
the interdealer repo market (the repo market for dealers) visualized pic.twitter.com/YfOaiMKvGv
— Conks (@conksresearch) January 20, 2024
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