By James Mackintosh

The exodus of senior banking analysts to Mayfair is continuing, with two more leaving Merrill Lynch and UBS to join hedge funds.

Chris Ellerton, previously head of the European banks team at UBS, has started at RAB Capital to set up a new financial sector hedge fund with Francis Peckham, a former specialist salesman at Citigroup.

Paul Tucker, head of the Europe, Middle East and Africa emerging markets banks team and emerging EMEA equity research at Merrill, will leave at the end of next week to join Egerton Capital, reporting to founder John Armitage.

He will be replaced in banking by Richard Thomas, who retains his position heading EMEA credit research on banks. Michael Harris and Erik Mielke have been promoted to co-heads of emerging EMEA equity research.

The moves follow Davide Serra, global head of banks research at Morgan Stanley, who left last year to set up specialist fund Algebris, backed by Chris Hohn’s Children’s Investment Trust. William de Winton left Morgan as co-head of European banks research two years earlier to set up a financial fund at Lansdowne Partners.

RAB’s new financial fund is one of three being set up this year, all seeded with $40m to $50m (£24m) by the Aim-listed manager, which is trying to diversify from its large mining and commodities investments.

The first of these, an Asian fixed-income fund, began trading at the start of this month, run by John Woods, a former senior proprietary trader at HSBC, and Mohamed Siddeeq. The next to launch will be the Market Cycles global macro fund, to be run by a team recruited from Société Générale.

RAB, which reports interim results on Monday, has also recruited Nick Tims, who quit as head of Merrill’s pan-European equity sales last year, to join its sales team.

Copyright Fund China 2009.

You Might Like: