The great migration from the sellside to the buyside continues in the trading business. The former global co-head of equities at Deutsche Bank has joined money manager AllianceBernstein.
Robert Karofsky, who spent most of his career at Morgan Stanley, signed up as AllianceBernstein’s global head of equity trading in New York. He began two weeks ago.
Karofsky reports to Patrick Whalen, himself a former sellside veteran at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers. Whelan heads all trading at the buyside shop, including equities, fixed income and quantitative, as well as the portfolio management group.
There’s a large list of sellside heavyweights who have moved to the buyside in recent years–mostly from the bulge bracket. Several have been chronicled in Traders Magazine, including Ray Tierney at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Keith Gertsen at AllianceBernstein and Rob Arancio at Neuberger Berman. Both Tierney and Gertsen have since moved back to their sellside roots. Other sellside execs who have gone to large buyside shops include Brian Conroy at Fidelity Investments and Michael Gitlin at T. Rowe Price.
Karofsky has joined this elite group. He arrives from Deutsche Bank, where he worked from 2005 through last spring. He started at Deutsche as global head of program trading and direct markets access and Americas co-head of cash equities. In 2008, he was promoted to global co-head of equities. He left approximately midway through 2010 after taking a leave of absence.
Prior to working at Deutsche, Karofsky spent 14 years at Morgan Stanley. There, he was most recently U.S. head of cash equity trading.
Barry Bausano replaced Karofsky as head of equities in North America in June. Bausano also remains co-head of global prime finance at the firm. He is based in New York.
Bausano arrived at Deutsche Bank in 2002 loaded with hedge fund experience. He joined from Red Wolf Capital Management, a hedge fund he founded and led as president and chief executive.
