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Note: Barclays Capital wants to increase its equity research staff more than fivefold in the next three or four years to lead the aggressive expansion of a research team that sent out its first analysis this week.
The bank hired Stephen O'Sullivan from Macquarie Bank in February to build its equity team, and he quickly started to recruit staff. This week two of his former colleagues, Tom Quarmby and Jon Windham, joined as head of regional banks for Asia ex-Japan and head of industrials Asia ex-Japan, respectively.
The latest hires have increased the equity research team to 28 people, and BarCap wants to hire two more staff in the division by the end of October.
The bank will initially concentrate on technology, banking, property, consumer and industrial research, using Hong Kong as its regional hub. Within three to four years, the bank hopes to have a team of around 170 in Asia ex-Japan, with a base in key markets such as Taiwan, Korea, India, Asean countries and Australia.
"We're in the latter phase of rolling out our global equity research platform following the acquisition of Lehman Brothers' strong US equity business in 2008," O'Sullivan told EuroWeek Asia on Tuesday, a day after BarCap sent out its first Asian equity research, four reports focused on consumer product companies.
"Our research strategy in Asia is to focus on a few sectors initially and then expand over time. Next year we plan to hire analysts to cover oil, metals, telecoms and utilities among other sectors, as well as expand our
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