Commerzbank

EuroWeek held its Syndicated Loans and Leveraged Finance Awards at London’s Guildhall last Wednesday. The great, the good and — by definition of not winning an award — the not so good, of the loan market turned out in droves to celebrate. For the benefit of those who weren't there, and for those who were but might have missed them, here are five more important revelations from the night.

Commerzbank, which recorded a decent set of full year results this week, is pushing to further its corporate finance business in several areas, the head of its corporate and markets division told EuroWeek.

After a long road to recovery, Commerzbank’s markets and corporates business was the group’s stand-out performer in the second quarter, writes David Rothnie.

Anything but euros worked for top-flight sovereign, supranational and agency issuers in the MTN market this week, as instability in both the banking and sovereign sectors rocked equity and CDS markets.

The last of the Lehman class of '95 has left the bank. Tiina Lee, Deborah Loades and Bruce Cairnduff went on to bigger and better things last millennium. And even Richard Tynan managed to do a passable impression of a rat as he jumped the good ship Lehman earlier this year. And now Julia Ward, Lehman's queen of origination, has seen the light and realised that, with a wedding to fund, she needs a more generous employer. Commerzbank may be ranked 20th in the MTNWeek league tables, but she has decided its better to work for a bank on the way up than one falling quicker than Rupert Lewis off his motorbike. Rumour has it that she is to take up her post in October, where she will be joining Francisco Perello, Commerz's head trader. And Commerzbank is not the only German house recruiting. Though Jon Saunders was being his usual coy self, we gather that Dresdner, after seeing most of its capital markets team walk out, is hiring again. Michael Stump has been added to beef up its MTN team, sparing poor Jon that tiresome job of pitching for programmes. And we hear there is another trader joining Jon soon. Watch this space . . .

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