As we mentioned last week, prop traders appear to be rising up the desirability ranks, despite the fact that UBS, Deutsche, Calyon and JP Morgan have either killed off or partially dismembered their prop trading desks. However, the new prop traders may well be different to the old ones.

In his interview with the Financial Times this week, Barclays chairman Marcus Agius said the bank’s still doing prop trading, but it’s not doing prop trading the way it did before.

According to the FT (which we assume got its information from Agius), Barclays no longer ‘operates dedicated proprietary trading teams, but its traders frequently take positions on the bank’s behalf alongside the “flow business” they are doing on behalf of clients.’

This being the case, some of the skill seems to have gone out of the prop traders’ art. And with traders now dependent on flows, surely some of the rewards have gone too.

Simon Maughan, a banking analyst at brokerage firm MF Global, says it’s all prop trading to him, but that the new version of prop trading is definitely less demanding than the old one: “All you need to do is sit on the desk and watch the flows – it’s just a question of copying what your more intelligent clients are doing.”

With investment decisions largely dictated by client flows, Ralph Silva, a research director at the Tower Group, says the new prop trading is mostly about best execution. Nevertheless, he says many of the old school prop traders are moving into it for want of anything better to do.

“I had a friend who was managing €3.3bn a day for a European bank,” says Silva. “Now that bank’s got no money and he would be managing a fraction of that.” He adds that this particular person hasn’t reinvented himself as a new-style prop trader, but is currently sitting on a beach in Australia.