Talent drain at LCG: Victoria Webb officially declares position as Director of wealth manager Jub Capital

For the refined and knowledgeable FX industry executives in London, it did not take long before those who joined LCG (formerly London Capital Group) shortly after its 2014 acquisition to either realize that there are far better names to be associated with and places to apply their abilities, thus moving on of their own accord, or for them to be part of the rash decisions that have become an LCG trademark, one particular example being the mass hiring and then mass redundancies.

Last year, LCG placed over 20 professionals on gardening leave in one fell swoop, most of whom had joined the company just a matter of months earlier from senior positions within some of London’s top level firms.

Today, Victoria Webb, who  joined LCG in April 2015 from IG Group and left LCG in August last year, has declared her new position seven months after having been appointed.

Ms Webb had contacted FinanceFeeds in August last year at the conclusion of her mandatory gardening leave period to explain her position, however no further commentary was made by the company, however today, albeit some months later, Ms Webb’s LinkedIn profile has been updated and the company has added Ms. Webb to its official page listing her as Director.

Jub Capital is an authorized representative of Stone Drum Partners in London, and is licnesed as a portfolio management company by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The company is led by Managing Director Adam Dziubinski who began his career in 2006 at a commodity broking firm CA Trading, working on the precious metals desk.

He then joined Cornhill Capital as a private client stockbroker in 2007 specialising in small cap resource sector stocks before becoming Head of Equity Trading in 2009 until his departure to found Jub Capital, a boutique investment management firm in December 2013.

Ms Webb joined the firm as Director, the latest senior executive position in her career. Ms Webb joined IG Index’s Chicago office in 2007, leaving in 2009 as Head of Client Services. She then spent one year at an IG subsidiary, Extrabet to streamline its client services and operations team before rejoining IG Index in November 2010 in London in a client dealing capacity before moving to Singapore to set up IG’s new office where she remained until August 2013 as Head of Trading Services, a capacity in which she spent two years before joining LCG along with her entire team.

Ms Webb’s departure from LCG came at a time during which the notorious axe was swinging.

The exodus that took place in June last year was not confined to senior management, and encompassed a number of sales staff, and amounts to approximately one third of the company’s entire payroll.

According to our sources at the time, some of whom claimed up to 20 staff had left the company, whereas others close to the matter could not quantify the exact number including the company’s legal department who were ‘not allowed to comment’, this was the largest exodus thus far.

Bianca Fischer, Head of German Sales & Trading is one example. Ms Fischer joined LCG in the summer of 2015 from IronFX Global’s London office. When asking for comment from Ms. Fischer, calls and messages were unanswered. Until this day, her LinkedIn profile states that she is Head of German Sales & Trading at LCG, seven months after she left the company.

FinanceFeeds contacted several key staff at LCG via email and telephone, all of whom declined to comment at the time.

Ironically, this exodus occurred simultaneous to an investigation by FinanceFeeds this week that revealed the alleged hiring of the former senior management team of ACFX, a company which has been the subject of a license suspension by CySec and which is at the center of a litany of customer related issues regarding withdrawal of funds, its office now lying completely empty in Limassol, Cyprus after its senior management fled the company, followed by its entire staff, leaving customers high and dry with no recourse.

Revolving door continues to revolve, and silence prevails

Previously, since the firm’s acquisition by GLIO in late 2014, LCG had hired several senior industry figures from very high quality companies, all of whom have left within a very short time.

Francois Nembrini, formerly Managing Director of FXCMPro, FXCM’s institutional division for 12 years left LCG after just one year, and is now leading QuanticAM, AFX Group’s institutional division. Arman Tahmassebi, who spent 15 years as COO of IG Group left LCG after just one year, and is now COO of ETX Capital in London.

Chinese FX industry expert Naomi Ewart-Simcock also left the company recently. Ms. Ewart-Simcock was a rising star at Alpari before joining LCG a year ago, and is one of the industry’s most experienced executives with regard to developing relationships with partners and large scale portfolio managers in mainland China.

In March this year, Ollie Rosewell also left LCG. Mr. Rosewell was Head of Brand Marketing at LCG between January 2015 and March 2016, before he left the company to become Head of Marketing at AFX Group.

Mr. Rosewell joined LCG almost immediately post-acquisition from IG Group where he spent 8 years as Senior Marketing Manager, after a 3 year stint at M&G in London.

In the summer of last year, LCG canned its newly established LCG Digital division after just 6 months.

Based in Tel Aviv, and run by Amedeo Muscato who has a substantial background within some of Israel’s widely recognized digital media and affiliate market firms including senior executive positions at OptionTime and AffOption, The Nation Traffic, Playtech and TraffiNet, the division was established to run digital marketing initiatives.

This was all canned and when contacted by FinanceFeeds, Mr. Moscato did not proffer a comment. He has now moved on to pursue his own business, Soho Media, which provides boutique traffic to firm across web, video and mobile advertising.

Setting up an entirely new entity, in a different country to the main operations of a loss-making company whilst its balance sheet has been in the red since 2011 and then canning it just six months later could be construed as a very unusual step to take.

In the beginning of 2015, LCG’s losses ran at approximately £7 million for the first quarter, by the end of the year, the hole in the bucket had increased so much that the firm had made a £13.9 million loss for 2015.

In spite of such losses, LCG moved its operations from Devonshire Square in the heart of the City of London’s financial district to the highly exclusive 1 Knightsbridge in London’s West End, and underwent a rebrand, part of which involved the purchase of the LCG.com domain for $175,000.