JPMorgan's 45-year-old head of credit trading is retiring after 23 years' work
If you're working in sales and trading and aspire to sunset your career in your mid-40s, then Austin Garrison, the head of North American credit trading at JPMorgan, is your guide. Aged 45, Garrison is retiring from the bank.
His departure was announced internally in a memo sent last month by Sanjay Jhamna, JPMorgan's London-based global head of credit trading. Garrison, who joined JPMorgan in 2002 aged 23, is a "a highly respected risk manager who successfully navigated multiple credit cycles," said Jhamna.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
Garrison, one man, is being replaced by three others. They are Jake Pollack as head of North American credit trading and Brett Nunziata and Rikesh Patel as co-heads of the global leveraged finance business.
Whether Garrison is genuinely retiring or simply retiring from JPMorgan before joining a hedge fund will soon become clear. He is, however, the latest in a long line of JPMorgan credit "lifers" to disappear.
As we noted last year, JPMorgan's credit trading business has a habit of losing senior talent that it's nurtured over decades. This might simply be the consequence of running a leading credit business and making enough money to stop working. For example, Guy America, the bank's former global head of credit trading and widely acclaimed architect of the business, left after 28 years in January 2023. America still describes himself as "on a break."
Jhamna's memo says Garrison will be "dearly missed." Not only has he navigated multiple credit cycles, but Jhamna notes that Garrison has expertise across investment grade, high yield, leveraged loans, CLO Primary and distressed.
Two of his three replacements are JPMorgan lifers. Pollack has been at the bank for 20 years and has worked across high yield and credit financing in New York. Nunziata has been at the bank for 18 years and has been head of leveraged loans, distressed and CLO trading during that period, also in New York. Only Rikesh Patel is a "recent" joiner, arriving in 2016 from Credit Suisse in London as head of EMEA loan trading.
JPMorgan may not want to pay them too much in case they leave too.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)
