Ulster Bank has appointed Mr Conor O'Kelly as managing director of its NCB Stockbrokers subsidiary. He will succeed Mr Padraic O'Connor, who is stepping down as managing director at the end of next month.
Mr O'Kelly, who has headed NCB's bond desk since the middle of last year and who has been head of bond sales since he joined NCB in 1995, was one of the favourites to succeed Mr O'Connor, together with NCB's head of equities Mr John Conroy, head of corporate finance, Mr Hugh Cooney and head of private clients, Mr John Kielthy.
Mr Conroy, however, has been rewarded with the position of deputy managing director while retaining his position as head of equities. Ulster Bank has also appointed NCB's finance director Graham O'Brien to the additional position of chief operating officer.
Commenting on reports that there had been differences between Ulster Bank and the NCB management on the relationship between the bank and the stockbroking subsidiary, particularly over NCB's level of autonomy within the bank, Ulster Bank Markets chief executive Mr Paddy McMahon said: "The relationship between the bank and NCB has always been very healthy."
He added: "NCB has a very good brand name and the aim is take the business forward on the same basis as before, but with more added thrust. There are young men leading the business - Conor O'Kelly is 38 and John Conroy is 39 - and they now have the opportunity to show their paces."
Mr McMahon said that he does not expect any further departures from NCB even though the four-year earn-out period is now over and former NCB shareholders - which included most of the senior staff - now have a less obvious financial incentive to stay on.
As well as Mr O'Connor, another senior level departure from NCB is Mr Jonathan Westrup who is leaving, according to informed sources "for lifestyle reasons," Mr O'Connor and Mr Westrup are two of the longest-serving NCB executives and were shareholders in NCB and both would have benefited financially from the takeover.
Last night, Mr O'Kelly said that NCB would continue its policy of growing all levels of the business and refuted the commonly-held view that the equity side of the business had performed disproportionately compared to the bond business.
"Last year was NCB's best ever in the bond market and accounted for 50 per cent of our income. What has changed is that our institutional customers are putting more money into bonds, but they are bonds of a different colour - not just Irish Government paper."
He added that he sees no reason why institutional investors to shift their trading in the whole new range of bond securities from Dublin to non-Irish stockbroking companies. "There's no reason why a guy in Dublin does not know as much as somebody sitting at a desk in Frankfurt. We are now bringing more varied international products, now we have a market with a huge range of new products and customers need help with those products.
After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, and Senshu University in Japan where he completed as MBA, Mr O'Kelly worked with BZW in London in the mid-1980's before taking up a position as head of the international bond market in BZW Tokyo between 1985 and 1988. Subsequently he moved to BZW in New York where in 1995 he became head of international fixed income and deputy managing director. He joined NCB as head of bond sales in 1995 and become head of the bonds desk in mid-1998.
