Investec Henderson Crosthwaite Securities, part of Investec, the South African financial services group, has recruited Alex Wood to cover smaller mining companies.

Wood had been at Robert Fleming, now part of JP Morgan Chase, for the past five years. He joins Nick Hatch, who also moved to the UK corporate finance and broking division of Investec Bank from JP Morgan Chase at the end of March to become global co-ordinator of the group's mining research team.