Canaccord Genuity has made a raft of senior hires to its bench of European and UK equity analysts, shrugging off concerns about the impact of new EU research rules on the City's smaller brokers.

The Toronto-based bank has hired from rivals Liberum, Stockdale Securities and Cenkos at a time when some smaller research providers in the UK have begun to feel the full force of the EU's second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.