Jain back to frontline financial services role as president of Cantor Fitzgerald

 

Anshu Jain is joining Cantor Fitzgerald as president, marking a return to the front line of financial services for the former co-chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank.

Yesterday Howard Lutnick, chairman and chief executive officer of the private Wall Street firm, announced that Mr Jain would take a newly created role overseeing company strategy, while pushing deeper into areas such as prime brokerage and fixed-income sales and trading.

He said that the pair met about five years ago through a mutual friend. In the middle of last year they began discussing how Cantor, a midsized investment bank, could take better advantage of the gaps left by big banks labouring under much tougher post-crisis rules on capital and liquidity.

“The math of doing business has changed,” said Mr Lutnick, noting efforts to “cull” clients at banks including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. “If you have the capacity to provide broad-based client services at a very high level, it is a unique opportunity.”

The appointment, effective next week, brings an end to a spell on the sidelines for Mr Jain, 53, one of the most colourful figures in the investment banking industry during a long career at Merrill Lynch and Deutsche.

Mr Jain oversaw a period of rapid growth at Germany’s largest bank, particularly in the markets business where he cut his teeth. His three-year spell at the helm ended unhappily in 2015, however, amid investor unrest over the direction of the bank he had headed with Jürgen Fitschen. Deutsche faced heavy criticism for not reacting swiftly enough to curtail its outsized trading business, and for failing to control costs.

Mr Jain’s management team revealed a plan for a strategic revamp in April 2015, but two months later the bank announced that both co-chiefs would make way for a new boss, John Cryan.

Since then Mr Jain has kept a mostly low profile, resurfacing as an adviser to SoFi, the San Francisco-based online lender, almost a year ago.

Mr Jain is the latest of a series of recently departed European bank bosses to embark on new careers. Bob Diamond, ex-head of Barclays, runs a boutique, Atlas Merchant Capital. Credit Suisse’s former chief Brady Dougan, who stepped down in mid-2015, is also set to open a new merchant bank early this year, according to reports.