Trawling the bottom in Europe
Is there life beyond the P/E ratio?
In union is strength
The ambitious strategies of Scottish banks to resist being sidelined in European retail banking have recently attracted much attention, but their plans also extend to high-growth areas of the capital markets.
Responding to the boom in leveraged buy-outs in Europe, Bank of Scotland (BoS) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have formed their first ever joint venture, Caledonian Capital. Already well established in the middle tier of the leveraged market (deals between $10 million and $100 million in size), the banks aim to use Caledonian Capital to position themselves as providers of loan financing in larger buy-out deals.
With the current influx of private-equity money into Europe showing no signs of slowing down and more international...