People and Business: Won one, lost two for HSBC

IT WAS swings and roundabouts for HSBC Investment Bank yesterday, as it lost two telecoms analysts to a rival but prepared to celebrate a notable success on the broking front.

Dr Robert Grindle and Christopher Hoare, who both specialise in European telecoms, have joined Dresdner Kleinwort Benson's Global telecommunications team, reporting to Warwick Bray.

On broking, it emerged that the float of Glotel, a staff agency specialising in telecoms, is going to prove a winner for the bank. Despite the fact that smaller company IPOs have suffered a recent famine, the Glotel float has been more than five times oversubscribed, according to Jonathan Gray, head of growth companies at HSBC. Trading in the shares starts today.

This comes after HSBC's sale of $3bn of its own shares last week. Now if they can just stop the analysts leaving...