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Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets has appointed Farouk Ramzan as managing director and head of debt origination, reporting to Mark Grant, managing director and head of debt capital markets (DCM).

He joins from Société Générale Corporate and Investment Bank, London, where most recently he built and led the DCM corporate origination team.

This hire is the latest move in a year-long strategy to create an all inclusive, City-based debt origination and distribution house at the UK bank, supporting parallel and significant growth spanning the wider FX and derivatives functions.

Ramzan will lead the DCM Origination (DCMO) team, working closely with the bank’s corporate relationship managers as well as the financial markets derivatives and wider capital markets teams to develop Lloyds TSB debt business with major franchise clients.

“The DCM unit is central in helping Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets become better at originating and distributing risk,” says Grant. “The stronger we are in this unit the more efficiently we can manage the flow of assets through our balance sheet.”

The bank has seen major growth in all areas across its corporate markets businesses in the past 18 months. Following the arrival of Mark Preston just under two years ago, the bank has attracted many new recruits to help underpin its move into uptiering its product capabilities. Clare Francis moved from HSBC to head up the FX and derivatives sales areas and was followed by a number of significant market players joining the bank in this area, the latest of which is Vishal Gupta who joins from ABN Amro to join the client solutions team.

Grant has also spearheaded strong growth within DCM over the past 12 months, increasing staff numbers by 30% through the hiring of high profile external bankers and developing existing staff into new roles.

“The recruitment process has been driven by our origination and distribution strategy,” he says. “Key external hires on the origination side include Andrew Moorfield as a managing director in DCMO and now Ramzan as head of that team

“We have also significantly bolstered the credit structuring and distribution parts of the business over the past year with the hire of secondary loan trading and structured credit teams”.

On the back of these hires, as well as leveraging existing internal expertise, the bank aims to make a bigger impact on the market as well including development of its European securitisation business. The bank is already a leading conduit player in Europe and one of the largest issuers of euro-denominated asset-backed commercial paper issuance.

“In 2002 we barely operated in the securitisation market,” says Grant, “but by January 2005 we had already written about £4bn of business, which has since expanded to £9.5bn.”

To date, the bank has made the biggest strides in the area of DCM distribution this year. The recent Arkle transaction – £7bn residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) – was a first not just for the bank but also broke the record for the largest UK RMBS transaction. In addition, Lloyds TSB has arranged and issued a securitisation of its SME loans totalling £1bn.

The transaction, called Ascot-Black, signalled Lloyds TSB’s intention to keep managing the flow of assets through its balance sheet.

As Grant notes, “Arkle was the largest ever UK RMBS asset-backed securitisation and should be seen as an indication of our ambition in the capital markets over the next few years.”

The bank’s origination capabilities have also been on an upward trend over the past few years resulting in the bank’s loan syndication function becoming a well established name in the UK market – ranked number three in UK investment grade syndications.

“Three years ago, Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets was the lead arranger on just 38 transactions,” says Grant, “so far this year we’vebeen lead arranger on over 60 deals.”

The bank is also expanding into bigger-ticket corporate lending and now regularly underwrites deals worth billions of pounds. In 2003, the largest deal it had ever done was about £400mn – a figure that is now closer to £2bn.