by Sarah Butcher,  eFinancialCareers

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Is Goldman Sachs consolidating its position and hiring in ‘top talent’ from rivals? We’re just asking because it’s hired a lot of people over the past month, almost all of whom have come from other banks and some of whom have accepted a demotion for the privilege of moving.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Register belies Goldman’s hiring appetite in London. In the past month, the firm has registered around 16 new people in the front office, almost all of them hired from outside.

Goldman’s new staff suggest a focus on the markets business. They include: David Barnett, a rates trader from UBS who joins as an associate; Andrew Moyons, an pan equity salesman who was previously a VP at Morgan Stanley; Simon Creeger, a quantitative trading specialist who previously spent seven years at J.P. Morgan; Conor Daly, a former assistant vice president (AVP) in FX sales at Barclays Capital; Tobias Stern, a former vice president in structured sales at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Ben Coward Talbot, a former executive director in electronic equities trading at Morgan Stanley; Chloi Karyda, a former analyst in index strategies at Barclays and Samad Javadi, a rates structurer from Barclays.

While some of these new recruits achieved promotions in their Goldman moves (Karyda went from analyst to associate, Stein went from VP to ED), others took a step back. After four years at Barclays, Daly was an AVP. At Goldman, he joins as an associate.

There are a handful of junior investment banking professionals among Goldman’s recent additions. For example, Bradley Jacobs, a former manager at Anglo American Thermal Coal, joined as an associate after completing an MBA at INSEAD. Ed Stephenson joined as a natural resources analyst after spending two years at Nomura.

Goldman didn’t comment on its new London recruits. Since January, registered headcount at the firm in the UK has fallen from 2,121 to 2,086 people.

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