* Market turmoil making for attractive hiring environment
* Demand for structured products picking up strongly
* Client service levels have dropped
By Simon Falush
LONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - Barclays is taking advantage of the finance sector upheaval to hire the best talent and is quickly building a competitive European and Asian share trading operation, head of equities Dixit Joshi told Reuters. The bank has taken on 450 staff in its equities trading business and will hire a further 300 by the end of the year, and the recent market turmoil means it will be able to pick the cream of the crop, said Joshi, speaking at his office in Barclays' Canary Wharf headquarters.
He said hiring in Europe and Asia would complement the strong position the bank took on when it bought the U.S. operations of Lehman Brothers last September.
"Top talent on the street are really seeking opportunities where they can operate their franchise in the way they were used to," Joshi said.
"With many of the firms across the street somewhat dislocated, top talent is looking to move. We've hired from Goldman, from UBS, from Citigroup, from Merrill, Morgan Stanley, the top equity players. And (from) within those firms we've attracted some of the top talent out there."
He said that with the large number of redundancies and scant competition from other banks for talent, offering top flight remuneration packages was no longer necessary to get the best people.
"This is a great hiring environment," Joshi said. "I don't want to talk about money, but you can read between the lines. There are more candidates out there than ever before. Top talent is looking to move for a variety of reasons."
TUMBLING VOLUMES
Trading volumes, which took a tumble after Lehman Brothers' collapse and the intensifying financial crisis, have been slow to recover, and this is forcing banks to look at their business models, Joshi said.
"Volumes have come off a lot, and that's put pressure on all participants across the industry to become more efficient.
"We saw a massive deleveraging in the hedge fund space, and the drop off in asset values has a knock-on effect on commissions."
One factor making it easy to build up business is client dissatisfaction caused by standards dipping in the wake of the financial crisis, Joshi said.
"The industry has been in turmoil and the client hasn't been looked after in this period. Client service across the street has taken a dive. Clients are not getting called, they are not getting service frequently enough, the people they spoke to are no longer there."
Joshi said volumes were starting to pick up, and that looking to build an operation at this point of the cycle leaves it well positioned to pick up market share from competitors.
"We have seen growth in structured products, which has picked up in the last three months as investors want to start generating alpha and want to get their portfolios in shape to take advantage of conditions that they are seeing right now." (Reporting by Simon Falush, editing by Will Waterman)