NatWest's Martin Joins M&T Bank As Manager Of FX Trading And Sales

Manufacturers & Traders Bank (M&T) has hired Varrick Martin as its new senior vice president and manager of foreign exchange and fixed-income trading and sales in New York. Martin joined M&T on December 1 from National Westminster Bank Plc in New York, where he was senior vice president in charge of FX currency options sales since August, 1992.

M&T is headquartered in Buffalo, New York, where it has a marketing effort, but its treasury operations are centred in New York City. Treasurer Bill Rappolt, who belongs to the Federal Reserve's FX Committee, indicates that Martin's hire is designed to improve M&T's competitiveness in FX.

"The idea is to increase our customer penetration," says Rappolt. "We're basically a middle-market bank, but we think Varrick brings us the ability to organise a marketing effort and re-dedicate ourselves to our market."

"We have a pretty good penetration in our home markets, but I think he's going to bring some credibility with him whereby we can start to do business with some of the larger clients," he adds.

"Foreign exchange hasn't been very well-integrated within the bank, historically," says Martin. "That's one of the things we are going to try to do." He adds that it is too soon to lay out his plans, but that he will be looking to both bring in new customers and improve service to the existing client base. Martin says eventually M&T could be a contender outside the middle-market group, but adds: "We have a lot of potential internally before we go anywhere externally."

In the newly-created position, Martin will head up trading for profit and the customer contact side of the business, reporting to Rappolt. Chief dealer Jack Roche and sales chief Michael Quinlivan report to Martin. M&T has six traders and three sales executives.

Since M&T is a border bank, it is active in Canadian dollars as well as the major currencies. Rappolt says M&T does trade on an interbank basis, but concentrates on commercial business "like a good regional bank." "We do quote and we do a pretty reasonable interbank business with our correspondent banks, but our emphasis is on the customer base," he says.

That base is overwhelmingly corporate, he adds. "There is some correspondent bank institutional business, but we don't have many hedge funds," says Rappolt. "It's something we'll take a look at, though, and see if it makes sense for us."