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Deutsche Bank has named former Citigroup dealmaker Alison Harding-Jones as its new world head of mergers and acquisitions, because the German lender seeks to enhance its standing within the aggressive enterprise dominated by Wall Street.
Harding-Jones begins subsequent week based mostly in London and can report back to Mark Fedorcik, co-head of Deutsche’s funding financial institution, in keeping with an announcement on Thursday. She left her earlier position as head of Citi’s M&A enterprise in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in March.
“I look forward to her leadership in taking our global M&A franchise to the next level,” Fedorcik stated. “She has . . . over 30 years of experience negotiating complex, high-profile transactions across multiple different sectors and regions.”
Harding-Jones — one of the vital distinguished feminine bankers within the area — joins at a troublesome time for dealmaking. Companies stay reluctant to make main acquisitions after rates of interest and debt prices rose quickly, and with excessive ranges of geopolitical stress from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
M&A transactions fell 17 per cent to $2.9tn final yr, the primary time volumes have dipped beneath $3tn since 2013. The sharpest drop was in Europe, Deutsche’s house turf, the place offers fell 28 per cent yearly versus a extra modest 6 per cent decline within the US.
The subdued exercise has hit M&A charges, which fell 26 per cent to $29bn, their lowest stage since 2016. This will most likely lead to deep cuts to funding bankers’ annual bonus swimming pools, that are finalised this month.
Harding-Jones faces a troublesome job to revive the place and status of Deutsche after years of retrenchment and restructuring at its funding financial institution.
For the previous two years, the German lender has ranked outdoors the highest 10 within the M&A league tables, in keeping with knowledge from Dealogic, at seventeenth globally and eleventh within the Emea area in 2023.
Goldman Sachs retained its main place, adopted by JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. Citi was eighth, adopted by European banks UBS and Barclays.
Previously, Harding-Jones ran Citi’s M&A operations within the Emea area from 2017 and earlier than then spent 28 years at UBS, together with main its Asia-Pacific M&A enterprise based mostly in Hong Kong.
She labored on offers together with Philip Morris International’s acquisition of the smokeless tobacco firm Swedish Match, and the £4bn buy of UK division retailer Selfridges by Thai conglomerate Central Group and Austrian group Signa in 2021.
Berthold Fürst and Bruce Evans, who had been operating Deutsche’s M&A enterprise on an interim foundation, will proceed of their capacities as head of funding banking protection for Emea and the Americas, respectively, the assertion stated.
The earlier world head of M&A, Drew Goldman, left the financial institution in October 2022 to hitch the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority because the sovereign wealth fund’s world head of actual property.
