Salomon Smith Barney says it has made a big recruiting coup by tempting regional equity strategist Ajay Kapur to defect from Morgan Stanley.
Otto Wong, Salomon's head of regional research, yesterday said: 'I'm very excited about this. This is the biggest research hire in Asia this year.'
Mr Kapur, who will be starting work next month, will bring his analyst team of Narendra Singh and Elaine Chu with him.
Salomon's incumbent regional equity strategist Han Ong 'has departed the firm', Mr Wong said. His assistants Paul Chanin and Ingrid Wong would be reassigned to other work.
Salomon has been swimming against the tide of late by aggressively expanding its regional staff while other houses had been retrenching.
Mr Wong said Salomon had realised that it had to take an all-or-nothing approach.
'It is still a reasonably profitable business model if you are a top-tier firm in all the industry groups,' he said.
