When Barclays’ presented its new strategy in February 2024, equity derivatives was one of the areas it intended to focus on. That was over two years ago and it’s not clear whether things are going to plan.
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Revenues in Barclays’ equities sales and trading business were up 16% year-on-year in the first quarter, an increase the bank attributed particularly to equity derivatives. This was stronger growth in equities revenues than at either SocGen or BNP, both of which failed to achieve even 6% growth. But it was a shadow of the 30%+ equities growth at BofA and Citi. Even UBS achieved a Q1 equities increase of 29%.
Barclays declined to comment for this article, but speaking off the record insiders say the British bank’s equity derivatives business has been hit by a wave of departures. Multiple senior people have left and now the business is unsettled because another two are off the desk.
Many of the exits have gone unreported. They include Ashish Prabhudesai, Barclays’ global head of structured derivatives who is understood to have quietly resigned a few months ago after 25 years with the bank. They include Arnaud Heckenroth, an MD in equity structuring who left recently after 13 years and who is thought to be going to a market maker. They include Thomas Garsi, an equity derivatives trader who was promoted to managing director last December, but who is understood to have left recently anyway. They include Rahul Vyas, an MD in structuring who also left last December after 17 years with the bank. And they include key figures among the next generation, like Virgil Meyre, a VP who’s thought to have gone recently to Morgan Stanley, Ben Wilson (a director) and Sulaiman Wihba, a junior who left Barclays and joined Goldman Sachs in March.
On top these departures, insiders at the bank tell us that Andreas Konomis, an MD in equity derivative sales, has been off the desk in London. So too has Pascal Sahli, the head of institutional sales for Switzerland. Barclays declined to comment on the absences, which are understood to be unrelated to each other.
So why have at least four MDs and at least four others left Barclays’ equity derivatives business in London?
The exits might be attributed to high turnover in a hot market as volatility rises and equity derivatives revenues boom. At JPMorgan, for example, equity derivatives revenues were reportedly up 40% in the year to November 2025, while equities revenues as a whole rose by a lesser 26%.
However, sources at Barclays suggest the exits are also bank-specific. Barclays’ equity derivatives franchise is patchy, claims one. It has a history of wavering commitment, claims another, remembering the historic hiring spree of Yannick Mallegol, a Ferrari-racing former head of flow sales, who built Barclays’ team up over a decade ago, only for it to be cut down again.
Whatever the reasons for the exits, things may get better. Ayo Akinluyi, the global head of strategic equity solutions at Barclays, who was promoted to head of EMEA equities at the end of 2025, is said to be a “great guy.” Insiders say he just hasn’t been in that seat for long enough.
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