Dresdner Bank AGs Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein investment banking arm has hired Citigroup Inc. veteran William Fish to be global head of loan syndication, a new position.
Dresdner Kleinwort has been building an integrated debt operation since it merged its global finance and global markets units in January. The effort includes a restructuring designed to make its loan syndicate business run the same way its fixed-income operation does, said Andrew Pisker, head of global debt at the investment bank.
The reason the Frankfurt company and others are reorganizing their syndicated loan departments is that the syndicated loan market has been acting more and more like the much larger bond market. Banks are making loans with the intent of selling large portions of them in the secondary market and keeping only small chunks on the books a shift from the traditional method of maintaining large positions.
Mr. Fish, who is to start in mid-May, will be based in London and oversee pricing and distribution of loan syndication, running operations in North America, Europe, and the Far East, Mr. Pisker said.
Loan syndication had been part of global finance, but it had been more regionally focused, he said.
Mr. Fish, whose hiring was announced Monday, has spent 15 years at Citigroup, most recently as a managing director of loan sales and trading for Europe, Middle East, and Africa with Citis European investment banking arm, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney. He will report to Mr. Pisker and Chlodwig Reuter, deputy head of global debt.
Other banks recent moves in their loan syndicate groups include Salomon Smith Barneys hiring of U.S. loan syndication head, a new position in its capital markets group, in late March. Its goal was to raise the importance of capital markets activities within the loan syndicate and give clients more market-driven feedback.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein was formed in January when Dresdner Kleinwort Benson merged with Wasserstein Parella.
