UBS's high yield trading team may be going through some more changes

UBS has got a newish head of high yield in the form of Robert Laux, who was its old head of EMEA leveraged trading before he left for a stint at BofA. Laux returned to UBS after nearly four years away in March 2026 and now it seems that his team there may be making some moves. 

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UBS declined to comment for this article, but it's thought that Shaun Barlow, who joined UBS in 2022 to run EMEA leveraged finance trading to replace Laux while Laux was at Bank of America, may be moving on. Barlow also declined to comment. He is still registered as working for the bank on the FCA Register.

Barlow began his career as an equity derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs before the financial crisis. Then he moved to credit trading at Goldman, jumped to JPMorgan and transmogrified into the head of high yield and distressed trading at Nomura. 

Barlow left Nomura in 2018 when the Japanese bank pulled back from distressed trading. He surfaced at Seaport Global in late 2019 according to the FCA Register, and left again for UBS in October 2022. 

Now Barlow may be moving on again. 

UBS's credit trading business is run by Jonathan Fletcher in London. Barlow is thought to have been one of Fletcher's hires. Previous recruits include Bharat Gupta, another former head of European high yield trading at UBS who left after 15 months in June 2026, and Carlo Armillis who joined from NatWest in August 2023 and left in October 2024. 

European high yield traders as a group are having a hard time. Some European credit hedge funds are having an even harder one. 

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