Seeking a cure for tax paralysis
These are goldrush days for German investment bankers, particularly the tiny number of M&A experts with the experience and contacts to handle the big deals. Predictably not one of those is on the payroll of a big German bank.
Ernst Fassbender, co-head of German investment banking at Merrill Lynch, is not just bragging when he says that there are just a handful of German M&A specialists with any experience or standing. "You can argue about whether there are five or 10 people leading this business, but there aren't many. We have more relationships than we can cope with."
Anyone who knows the German scene remotely well can list off those individuals with ease: besides Paul Achleitner (shortly to move to Allianz) and his erstwhile colleagues at Goldman Sachs, there's Werner Pfaffenberger and Klaus Diederichs at JP Morgan, Norbert Reis at CSFB, Ernst Fassbender and team at Merrill Lynch, Lutz Raettig and Dietrich Becker at Morgan Stanley, Marija Korsch at Metzler and arguably one or two others.
For those with a long view on German finance, it is astounding not to find a representative of Deutsche or Dresdner Bank on this list.