One of the big hirers of the year is Jefferies, the mid-sized US investment bank which has been taking advantage of the market dislocation to hoover up staff. Yesterday it emerged that Jefferies has hired 17 London-based people for its rates business as it joins the queue of contenders moving into the government bond space.

But while Jefferies should be a recruitment firm’s dream, it sounds very distinctly like a recruitment firm’s nightmare.

Daniel Markaity, co-head of Jefferies’ global fixed income rates business, says the most recent hires were made through networking: “We have identified our key hires via our own connections and network of relationships.” None of them, it would appear, came through search consultants.

Was this because some of Jefferies hires were kicking around wondering what they’d do next (much of the new team came from Dresdner)? Not necessarily.

"Most of the people we have hired were at inflection points in their careers and were looking to make a transition because of the market forces that confronted everyone over the past 2 years," Markaity says.

It seems that bankers at rival firms have been phoning their friends and former colleagues at Jefferies to offer their services.

Markaity points out that Jefferies is now the largest pure US investment bank. It is also a small and streamlined place, with 'the feel of certain investment banking firms that evolved in the 1980s.'

And, of course, it is not under the watchful eye of the US pay czar.

Markaity says Jefferies is still hiring, opportunistically.