Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. will hire 50 currency and interest-rate derivatives traders globally in the next three years to help more than double annual profit in the business to ¥500 billion.
Lending unit Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. will also add 150 sales and research staff in Asia, Europe and the U.S., upping the derivatives business roster to 1,700 by March 2015, global markets head Hitoshi Suzuki said in an interview Friday. The bank plans to meet the profit goal by March 2017.
Japan's biggest bank is betting that the market for over-the-counter currency and interest-rate derivatives, valued at $15.5 trillion as of last June, will help to spur earnings as the economy fails to grow enough to fuel lending and lessen its dependence on government bond trading. The hiring plans contrast with the global banking industry's more than 130,000 job cuts announced last year.