No surprises at the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development after the departure of treasurer Mark Cutis to Nomura. His successor is Marcus Fedder, the 38-year-old former deputy and a member of the EBRD's only profit-maximizing team since 1991.
Tall, thin, with youthful good looks, and the air of a well-behaved school prefect, Fedder was recruited by René Karsenti, EBRD'S first treasurer, now finance director general at the Euopean Investment Bank (EIB), on advice from friends at the World Bank.
Fedder's no-nonsense, problem-solving effectiveness helped Karsenti design the terms and conditions of the EBRD's first loan - a $50 million single-currency facility for a Polish urban-heating project. Despite a spread three times that charged by the World Bank, it has served as a blueprint for the bank's lending.
Fedder recalls: "The World Bank in those days was a one-product institution, but its currency mix (a third yen, a third US dollar and a third Deutschmark) did not always enable clients to best limit their risk. Our approach at the EBRD was investor- and client-driven from the outset."
Fedder set about designing the most sophisticated risk-management system in a supranational institution.