Top Shops in Canada?

I'm at a Canadian target school, a believer in the long term commodity bull market and the strength of the C$. I want to work in Canada, so Toronto & Calgary are pretty much the places to be for sales & trading (right?).

What are the top money making desks? RBC generates a lot more trading revenues than its peers and aparently always leads new technology initiatives. I've heard / read that Scotia is making a lot in structured products & derivatives, and is strong in the emerging market. TD scaled back their structured products and seems risk adverse. I don't know much about CIBC - but they seem to like risk (which I like) and their investment banking franchise is definitally the most entrepreneurial of the Canadians. BMO gets tons of broker volume through their Nesbitt Burns investment advisor franchise, but just lost a ton of money on natural gas so may be scaling back risk.

What about international banks here? Goldman, UBS, MS have energy trading operations in Calgary. Merrill has a large trading desk in Toronto and has the biggest investment banking presence in Toronto of the global banks. I know Merrill has some top prime broker accounts. I think UBS trades a lot of Canadian equities too, but i'm not sure if that's out of Toronto, and I'm looking for something more challenging than vanilla equities.

Can someone in the industry comment on my view of the landscape? Any suggestions on where I should try and get a job?

7 Comments
 
Best Response

Sorry about that, but I tried a search before I asked my question and the canadian content is centered around banking. Doing a search just on the trader forum came up with 1 informative post from ChimpTrader from a year ago:

RBC - Very elite. Would be best for most of FI. Top notch training program. Best on bay street.

TD - For equities as their equites division is basically the Newcrest guys with greats such Johnny O on the team.

BMO - cant say much about these guys as they dont even have a S&T program for new grads. Not sure how they hire but I've heard from one of their traders that the bond desk is a major player in the canadian market.

CIBC - More prominent with IBD especially M&A. Hardly a player when it comes to S&T. Trading floor looks ghetto as well.

ML - I wouldnt go with a US BB S&T in Canada, as the market is pretty much the domain of the big 5.

This pretty much confirmed my point of view on RBC, was interesting to hear about BMO & TD, no mention of Scotia. Can you recommend any other forums to read about this sort of thing or comment?

 

If you want to do S&T, your best bet would be commodities, because you can work on an energy desk in Calgary. And the big 3 commodities shops (Goldman/J.Aron, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays Capital) all have sales up there, and maybe a handful of structurers, as well. But the offices are small, and you'll find that everything is still based out of New York for those 3.

 

TD and RBC are the elites in Canada. The other 3 banks are tier 2s.

IF you dont care though, also look at some of the oil companies as they also have trading programs. BP, Suncor, Shell, Encana etc.

Also look at some US ibanks as they are looking to expand in Calgary - specifically Barcalys and goldman are looking to expand their trading offices significantly in calgary

 

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