Charles Schwab, the online brokerage, has hired 12 equity sales and trading staff to boost its US institutional equities business, Schwab Capital Markets (SCM), after withdrawing from the UK securities markets last month.

The brokerage, which saw institutional equity revenues increase more than three-fold during 2002, said in February that it would probably hire around 30 stock traders this year for the capital markets division, which offers trading, research and support services.