Back in the late nineties we briefly considered becoming derivatives traders just to work with one guy—Ralph Reynolds. He had recently been hired away from Morgan Stanley by NatWest to develop a U.S. equities derivatives business for them. Word was that Ralph was the real deal, hardcore, that he "got it.”

That move didn’t last long. Soon NatWest itself was on the block—it would eventually wind up with the Royal Bank of Scotland—and Ralph’s team wound up with Deutsche Bank, running their proprietary trading desk. (It was right around this time, by the way, that the NatWest 3 were allegedly doing whatever it is they allegedly did.) Someone else gave us a different job and our dreams of trading for Ralph slipped away.

Over the years we kept hearing about Ralph. When Morgan Stanley seemed to be melting down in 2005, for instance, he hired a bunch of lads from Morgan to work for him at Deutsche. Someone once wondered aloud if Ralph’s success at Deutsche was turning the entire bank into one big hedge fund.

Well, Ralph’s still with us. But he won’t be with Deutsche Bank for long. This morning Reuters is reporting that Ralph is moving over to Carlyle to run a hedge fund.

Carlyle to hire chief for new hedge fund-sources [Reuters]