Barclays strengthens US leveraged finance with 10 hires

Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of the UK’s Barclays Bank, has expanded its leveraged finance team in the US with ten hires.
 
Tim Broadbent has joined as a managing director in bank loan syndication after 22 years with JP Morgan. Dave Scudellari has joined as a managing director in leveraged finance from the Americas financing group at Goldman Sachs, where he had worked for 23 years.
 
Ed Kearns, Jack Melnikoff and Chris Dowicz have joined Barclays Capital as directors in bank loan sales from UBS, Goldman Sachs and CIBC World Markets respectively. Prior to UBS, Kearns spent 19 years at Goldman Sachs.
 
Ian Palmer has joined as a director in bank loan syndication from CIBC World Markets, where he spent 10 years, Faisal Hamdard as an associate director in bank loan trading from UBS. Kevin Baer, previously at Rosedale Capital, has been appointed a director and cash CDS trader, Sarah Cole has joined as an associate director from Goldman Sachs, and George Brickfield has moved from UBS to become an associate director in distressed debt trading.
 
Barclays Capital’s US leveraged finance team, based in New York, is co-headed by managing directors Rick Van Zijl and Joe McGrath, who joined from Goldman Sachs at the beginning of the year.
 
Zijl said that the leveraged finance team now numbers more than 70 professionals: “We have begun serving new issue clients. We have also been trading loans for two months and high-yield bonds for the past three weeks. We expect to begin executing transactions now that most of our team is in place.”
 
In London, Chris Coles heads Barclays Capital’s European leveraged finance team. The firm has provided a number of financing packages for European transactions in 2006, including Apax Partners’ €60 million ($76 million) acquisition of France Telecom’s Mobile Satellite Communications unit earlier this week; ABN Amro Infrastructure Capital Equity Fund’s purchase of ESP Pipelines Group from Terra Firma Capital Partners for £225 million in June; and the £2.2 billion buyout of General Healthcare Group by a consortium including Apax Partners, London and Regional Properties, Brockton Partners and Netcare.