A Japanese bank has lost many members of its credit trading team
US banks have paid their bonuses for 2025. So have European banks. Japanese banks, have not.
Insiders say that Mizuho, one such Japanese bank, usually announces its bonuses in April before paying them in May. This year, various traders have left before May arrives.
The most recent among them is Asif Godall, Mizuho's most senior trader in Europe. Financial News reported last week that Godall has left the bank to "pursue other opportunities." Godall didn't respond to a request to comment on what these might be, but given his historic success at sniffing out wrongdoing at collapsed lender MFS while he was at Cairn Capital, private credit firms might want to hire him. Godall is understood to have left entirely amicably.
Mizuho isn't commenting on Godall's departure. Nor is it commenting on the disappearance of various members of Godall's team in the past six months. Co-heads of credit trading Hardeep Bariana and Aristo Vounakis left in March. Credit trader Mostafa Ismail left in December and is now at Barclays. Joseph Rock, another credit trader, went to UBS in November. Bader Barghoti, an emerging markets credit trader, went to rival Japanese bank SMBC in January. David Ceruti, another senior credit trader at Mizuho, is understood to be enroute to SMBC, too.
The implication is that Mizuho might need to hire some more credit traders, soon. It's not clear how much money it will have available to pay them: there are suggestions that some of the leavers were among its highest profit generators in the past.
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