BankBoston Plans Munich Office to Launch IPOs for European High-Tech

BankBoston is expanding in Europe, focusing not on commercial banking, but on capital markets.

Stephen Schweich, managing director for European operations at BankBoston Robertson Stephens in London, confirmed in a telephone interview that his company will open an office in Munich on Jan. 1 to broaden its initial public offering business for European high-tech companies.

BankBoston said it was opening its first Continental office in Munich because it is Germany's center for venture capital financing. It also is helpful to be near Switzerland and Austria.

"European technology firms are still in the early stages of raising capital, and we expect there will be significant increases,'' Mr. Schweich said.

He estimated that over the last two years Robertson Stephens has helped raise at least $2.3 billion for European companies on European and U.S. exchanges in some 20 equity offerings. This included equity issues on European exchanges. A number of them were initial public offerings.

BankBoston has hired Peter Hoffmann-Fischer, a Danish specialist in European technology companies, to head the Munich office. Mr. Hoffman-Fisher had been chief financial officer of the U.S subsidiary of Beaufour-Ipsen, a French pharmaceuticals group.

The bank has also recruited three additional analysts in London and plans to move Richard Mauterer from San Francisco, where he worked for 10 years, to London to head European equities trading.

The analysts are Kevin Brau, a wire analysts from Credit Suisse First Boston; Derek Brown, a specialist in e-commerce and the Internet from Deutsche Bank; and Sharon Corr, an expert in software and information technology, from Merrill Lynch & Co.

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