Six equity analysts in New York are now out of a job. In
mid-February Deutsche Bank Securities, the US division of the
investment bank, decided to fire them. Eighteen months ago that
would have been taken as yet further evidence of how the German
parent's love affair with investment banking was coming to an end.
In July 1998 Frank Quattrone had just taken his entire technology
investment banking team - over 120 people - to CSFB, Deutsche's
Europe-first policy was regarded as forget-US, and investment
bankers were worried that they were losing out in the battle for
control, to the Vorstand and the German commercial bankers.
It was no different in debt capital markets. "A lot of people
outside the firm interpreted the so-called "Europe First" policy as
Europe only and were telling our clients we had given up on the US
market," says Grant Kvalheim, global head of debt capital markets
at Deutsche, and...
