Barclays poaches BofA's Casavechia for M&A arm

Barclays has strengthened its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team in the US, building on its recent success in that space.In what may be a good sign for Barclays, it has managed to poach Richard Casavechia from rival Bank of America Merrill Lynch to lead its M&A structuring arm, according to an internal memo seen by the Financial Times.According to data from Dealogic published on 8 September, and cited by the newspaper, the bank ranked third in the tables for M&A fees – one of the main money spinners for Wall Street’s banks - generated over the year to August – coming in only slightly behind Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.It is the first time that the lender has managed to break above the fourth spot by this time of the year in those rankings, the FT added.For the same time period Canary Wharf-based Barclays remained in fifth position in the research boutique’s global M&A rankings for the same period - behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi and JP Morgan - with $482bn in M&A transactions announced.The British lender has been at troubles in recent times to retain some of its top bankers due to the stringent caps on bonus payments which have been set by regulators.Barclays’ push in the US comes not soon after having exited the Spanish market, via the sale of its Iberian operations to Barcelona-based Caixabank for approximately €800m, representing 0.47 times price-to-tangible-book-value (PTBV).As of 11:58 shares of Barclays were rising by 0.77% to 227.6p, having fallen 16.3% year-to-date.