RBS Leveraged Finance Expands –

The Royal Bank of Scotland‘s leveraged finance group continues to build on its European presence with the appointment of seven senior executives to its Frankfurt office. This brings the team in Germany up to 16. RBS has a leveraged finance team in every major European private equity market, including Italy, Germany, France and, most recently, Spain.

The leveraged finance strategy is to support RBS’ key private equity customers wherever they are contemplating a transaction. The group has now pretty much reached the required level of professionals for its workforce to compete with the investment banks that are handling large deals. These new appointments emphasize RBS’s commitment to grow its leveraged finance business and combine local knowledge with expertise in the leveraged finance arena, said Michael Focking, managing director of leveraged finance in Germany.

As director of the LBO team, Dan Schweizer will report to Focking and is responsible for arranging and overseeing LBO transactions in German speaking countries, with a main focus on the mid-market. Schweizer joins from BHF-BANK, where he was a team head in the specialised finance department, arranging a number of LBOs in Germany, Switzerland and France.

Axel Sommer and Degenhard Schroeren have been appointed as associate directors responsible for LBO deals and Andre Simon has been recruited as manager. Sommer has extensive experience in the execution of financial buyers transactions. He joins from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he worked for three years on the acquisition finance team in Frankfurt. Schroeren joins from Deutsche Bank’s project finance team where he was for over five years, working on structured finance transactions such as project finance advisory and arranging mandates in the utilities, telecommunications and infrastructure sector. Simon was previously at BHF-BANK where he was working on the acquisition finance team on German and French transactions.

As of Oct. 1, Torsten Franke will join RBS as associate director from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he worked with the high yield bond origination team in London and the acquisition finance team in Frankfurt.

Focking said, “I am delighted that we continue to attract high quality people to our team. We now have 16 senior professionals with a vast knowledge of the market. Their experience allows us to concentrate on larger deals whilst not neglecting the core of our business – providing mezzanine and senior debt to the mid market.”