Merchant New FX Spot Trading Head as Deutsche Shuffles Pack

Lee Merchant has been appointed global head of FX trading at Deutsche Bank and will relocate from Sydney to London as part of the role. A 24-year veteran of Deutsche, Merchant was head of GFX for Asia-Pacific, the bank says a replacement will be appointed in due course.

Merchant started his career as an FX spot trader with Deutsche in London, before relocating to first New York and then Asia-Pacific in 2010. He worked in Tokyo for just over two years, before moving to Sydney. In his new role, he will work alongside Ben Carter, who is taking the role of global head of FX spot quantitative trading, and report to David Leigh, who has had his responsibilities extended beyond e-FX trading to encompass the wider FX trading business.

Carter has been with Deutsche for almost 12 years on the spot e-FX trading team and in his new role he will continue to report to Roel Oomen, head of FIC quant trading.

“The spot FX market place remains the underlying driving force of our business,” say Leigh and global head of foreign exchange Russell LaScala in an internal memo seen by The Full FX. “The product continues to advance towards greater sophistication in the electronic trading space, while still upholding an important human trader interaction point and risk management avenue for our client base.”