Barclays Capital strengthens high-grade credit derivatives trading team

Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays, has appointed Spencer Jesner and James Parascandola to the firm's high-grade credit derivatives trading team. Jesner joins as a director and head of the US credit default swap trading team, reporting to Vince Balducci, global head of risk finance, while Parascandola joins as an associate director and credit derivatives trader. Both will be located in New York

Jesner joins the firm after four years at JP Morgan Chase, where he was a high-grade credit derivatives trader in New York. Prior to that, he spent two years in Hong Kong as an assistant director in the credit research department of fund manager, Peregrine Fixed Income and as a senior financial analyst in the corporate credit department at Goldman Sachs.

Parascandola joins the firm from IntesaBci, where he headed the high-grade single-name trading, sales and marketing efforts out of New York from 1999 to 2002. Parascandola was also involved in a wide array of structuring, both for the firm as well as corporate clients in the US, in addition to his single-name trading responsibilities. Prior to that, he was an emerging markets risk manager for Lehman Brothers, where he developed the Country Risk model - the platform for monitoring and risk assessing the firm's fixed-income and foreign exchange emerging market proprietary business.