Credit Suisse chief FX spot dealer and 5 others leave bank in cost-cutting drive

LONDON: At least six foreign exchange employees at Credit Suisse in London and New York, including head of FX spot trading in London Danny Wise, have left the Swiss bank in a cost-cutting drive, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Their departure is part of cost cuts in the bank's Macro Products Group within its Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) division and is not related to a global probe into allegations of collusion and price-rigging in the foreign exchange market, the source said.

Wise, the highest profile of the six, had joined from Barclays in 2011. He was also part of a group of chief dealers from banks in London who met up to four times a year with senior Bank of England officials to discuss the main issues and events affecting the currency market.

The job cuts represent a "tweaking" of Credit Suisse's fixed income division following a broader and deeper shake-up in October last year, the source said.

Wise could not be immediately reached for comment.

The other five are: Zain Iqbal, analyst, FX options trading in London; Arran Manu, analyst, FX spot trading in London; Monika Dasani, vice president, FX hedge fund sales in London; Mark Astley, director, senior FX strategist in London; Martin Amann, director, hedge fund FX sales in New York.

None of them could be reached for immediate comment.

The bank's revenues from bond trading in the first quarter of this year fell 25 percent from the same period a year earlier, driving overall investment banking profits down 36 percent, the bank said in April.

Credit Suisse is one of several major banks assisting regulators around the world in their FX investigation.

In March, it said it was "astonished" to be drawn into a Swiss competition probe investigating potential collusion to manipulate FX rates.

Credit Suisse dropped out of the ranking of the world's top 10 FX banks this year, according to a poll by Euromoney. London is the hub of the global FX market, accounting for around 40 percent of its $5.3 trillion-a-day turnover.'