Scotia Capital on Tuesday ramped up the services it provides to U.S. hedge funds by landing the former head of prime brokerage at Barclays Capital.
The new head of U.S. prime brokerage in the New York office of the Canadian dealer is John Stracquadanio, who spent the last 12 years as head of the hedge fund servicing team at Barclays. Before that, Mr. Stracquadanio was at Morgan Stanley and ING.
Scotia Capital, a unit of Bank of Nova Scotia , is seeing all sorts of new opportunities in U.S. capital markets due in part to its strong balance sheet and credit ratings. The credit crunch that played out from 2007 to 2008 made institutions far more aware of counter-party risk in areas such as prime brokerage and derivatives. A number of hedge fund managers took a drubbing when Lehman Brothers, a major player in prime brokerage, collapsed in 2008.
Mr. Stracquadanio will build a team that capitalizes on the investment bank's strength and stability, working with Toronto-based Patrick Blessing as co-heads of the global prime brokerage group. The Barclays veteran must take a three-month gardening leave, so he will join Scotia Capital as a managing director in July.
This is the latest in a series of Wall Street hires by a trio of Canadian bank-owned dealers. RBC Dominion Securities, owned by Royal Bank of Canada, and BMO Capital Markets, a unit of Bank of Montreal, have also been actively recruiting U.S. talent over the past year.