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Salomon's stealth

Salomon Smith Barney steals BonJun Koo from under Lehman''s nose while on gardening leave.

Salomon has announced another interesting round in the game of musical chairs being played out in investment banking in Korea.

Last week Lehman announced that it had recruited Koo to its Korean research team but while on gardening leave from Morgan Stanley, Salomon snatched the opportunity to redivert Koo into the Citigroup fold. Koo will now be the analyst responsible for Korea semiconductor research.

As FinanceAsia noted on April 15, Koo is a highly ranked analyst.

A second hire has also been announced with the appointment of Sameer Kakakhel as vice president covering Korean chemicals, utilities and mid-caps. He was previously head of the regional capital goods and cyclicals team at WI Carr.

Both will report to Otto Wong, the head of regional research for SSB as does Wahid Butt the new head of research in Korea announced last week. Wong comments, "the hires complete the build-out of our Korean country research team."