Exclusive: Goldman hires Mike Workman from UBS ahead of sovereign Eurobond decision

By Jason Corcoran in Moscow

Goldman Sachs have hired Michael Workman from UBS for a senior role in fixed income just as the US investment bank expects to land a key role on Russia’s $17bn Sovereign Eurobond issue.

The Wall Street Bank declined to comment but a source close to Goldman Sachs in Moscow confirmed Workman had already joined their Moscow operation in “a senior role.”

Goldman, regarded as the most powerful investment bank on Wall Street, is believed to have conducted a non-deal roadshow as part of sovereign bond’s pre-marketing during the summer.

The Eurobond issue, outlined in the 2010 budget, would be the first since Russia defaulted on $40bn of domestic bonds in 1998. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin is expected to unveil details of the bond in  a presentation to potential investors on Thursday.

Goldman, which is understood to have cut its Moscow headcount by about 20% following last year’s crisis, has been trying to build out again as the pipeline for capital markets in Russia starts to fill up. The bank has recently hired a number of sales executives from Otkritie having been frustrated in an attempt to lift a team from Credit Suisse.

It has also recently hired Konstantin Pavlov from Zenit Bank for a senior sales role covering derivative and structured products and Dmitri Barinstein from Deutsche Bank to cover equity capital markets and M&A.

American Workman is an experienced Russian operator and was head of fixed income research at Trust Investment Bank in Moscow before joining UBS a year ago. He had previously been a senior fixed income analyst with Goldman Sachs in London where he was responsible for the bank’s coverage of emerging market corporate bonds in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Before moving to Goldman Sachs, he worked in Moscow with Renaissance Capital as vice president of fixed income sales & trading.  He began his career as an analyst with ABN AMRO and graduated from the University of Notre Dame with degrees in finance and economics and Russian.

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