Oriel Securities deputy chief departs

The deputy chief executive of mid-tier broker Oriel Securities – which named a new chief executive last month – has left the firm, according to a filing with Companies House.

 

Paul Thompson was no longer a director of Oriel Securities as of last week, according to the Companies House register. The Financial Services Authority's register of authorised persons shows that Thompson ceased to be an employee of the firm from September 30.

 

Oriel named David Knox as its new chief executive on September 7. Knox and Thompson had been joint acting chief executives of the business since July. Oriel’s former chief executive, Simon Bragg, had taken a sabbatical around this time owing to personal issues, according to the firm.

Upon Bragg's return in September, the decision was made to appoint Knox as permanent chief executive. Bragg became chairman of corporate finance.

One person familiar with the matter said Thompson had left to give Knox the space to run the business, while a second said that he had left to pursue other opportunities. Both people said there had been no animosity between Thompson and Knox and that Thompson had been a “good leaver”.

Oriel Securities declined to comment.

 

A former Citigroup banker, Thompson joined Oriel in December 2010 alongside Glenn Poulter – another former Citi banker who had previously led Icap’s ill-fated push into equities – who joined as head of equities.

 

Poulter departed Oriel after less than a year in the job in December 2011 after a disagreement with former CEO Bragg, according to reports at the time.

 

Poulter, a well-known City of London figure, had asked the then chief executive to extend the period beyond which he could withdraw an investment he made in the firm initially. Bragg refused the request and Poulter left the firm before Christmas, the reports said.

 

Thompson stepped in as head of equities in the interim, before Knox joined from JP Morgan Cazenove to fill the role.

A number of senior figures have left Oriel in the past year, including former head of debt advisory Michael Berry.

 

The firm, which is employee owned, had grown rapidly in recent years but has since had to make large scale cutbacks amid a tough trading environment for mid-tier brokerage firms.

It had employed 155 employees at its peak before cutting back to 105 at the beginning of September, Knox told Financial News in an interview last month.

He said: "It is inevitably painful when you have to scale back. I would not want to say that anyone made a mistake in hiring, because at the time there was real dislocation in the market place, which meant that some very good people became available, and they wanted to be part of the Oriel story, and they still do.

 

He added: "I don’t think we were basing those hires on the assumption there would be a bull market, but equally I don’t think anyone quite foresaw the difficulty in terms of the lack of market activity over the course of the past six to 12 months."