A former colleague of Richard Briance, the recently installed chief executive of WestLB's merchant banking arm, says: "West Merchant Bank were unbelievably lucky to get him. If I was him I'd have held out for a bigger job."
For Briance, heading the international investment activities of Germany's third-largest bank is a big job but he is not one to blow his own trumpet - "It's so deeply not my style to put myself forward," he pleads, palpably uncomfortable at the idea - safe perhaps in the knowledge that others will do it for him.
"He has huge energy and a very good overall vision," the former colleague continues. "He's a very good team builder, commands respect from clients, hires well, and is very good at delegating - and lots of people get on with him."
Lots, maybe, but not everyone. Of his departure in February from UBS, where he was global head of fixed income until a well-publicised "lack of fit" with his immediate superior, Hans Peter Bauer, Briance says it was "probably more to do with personality than business philosophy". Bauer's task had been to marry UBS's derivatives and bond businesses, but the two men did not see eye to eye. There was also a rumoured run-in with UBS's chief executive in Singapore Lim Ho Kee.
Eton- and Cambridge-educated Briance is nothing if not diplomatic, and he would rather not dwell on the past; he prefers to talk about his new challenge of building an equity business at West Merchant Bank (WestMB).
Tallish, dapper, and swarthily good looking, he has an affable, yet guarded manner. In conversation his lips stay slightly pursed and an occasionally quizzical look gives the impression he is checking he has not just put his foot in it, however unlikely that might be.
His delivery is smooth, laconic, economical, slightly drawly, giving the minimum away, a technique perhaps gleaned in embassy drawing rooms alongside his father, a diplomat. His energy - he often gets through 12 meetings a day - might have come from his dynamic mother, who was responsible for setting up the worldwide National Childbirth Trust.
Born in 1953 in Cyprus, Briance spent his childhood travelling from one far-flung embassy compound to another - his father worked in Cyprus, Singapore and Washington (though never as an ambassador). At eight, he was sent to preparatory school on England's south coast, and from there, at 13, to Eton, where he excelled at tennis and squash and was elected a member of Pop, the elite cadre of school prefects chosen by their peers on the basis of clubbability and overall street cred.
Briance then went up to Cambridge where he joined dining clubs, read modern languages and won a squash Blue. After coming down, he was wondering what to do to pay off his accumulated debts - he toyed with the idea of joining the Foreign Office - when he met David Potter at a Blues match.
Potter suggested that he join Credit Suisse White Weld, and like most bright graduates in the early 1970s, Briance went in as a corporate financier. Within a year he had switched to trading and marketing the Eurodollar CD book - then a far less common destination for former Oxbridge alumni - and for someone who "fell into" banking, he was soon doing well at it.
Back to London
In 1977 he returned to London to take charge of the FRN business for CSFB, building the dominant primary and secondary market franchise, culminating in a market share of over 50%, and managing some of the largest transactions to date in the Euromarket.
Six years later he was an executive board member, with responsibility for all fixed-income sales in Europe, and for building a research department. He reported directly to Jack Hennessy, then chairman and chief executive. At the time of "Big Bang" Briance became chairman of CSFB UK, overseeing all the sterling activities of the firm, and when Oswald Grübel moved to Credit Suisse, he took charge of all the firm's fixed-income trading and sales activities in Europe. Then, all of a sudden, in early 1991, he quit, with the idea of starting his own business.
He spent the next few months, as he puts it, "accumulating a portfolio of activities". He became a Tory councillor in Kensington where he lives with his wife and four children. He held the position for the next four years, and did some consulting.
But in October 1991, he was invited by Rudi Mueller, chairman of UBS in London, to take charge of the bank's debt and treasury division, and was sucked back into the bond business.
Five years later he was global head of fixed income, responsible for the worldwide bond market business of UBS, and in time for reorganizing it along global business lines and recruiting big hitters such as John Costas, Mike Hutchins and Kyran McStay.
Following his arrival at WestMB, Briance talks, predictably, of relishing his "more strategic" job and is pleased with the reporting lines apparently far clearer than those at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. "The people here report to me and I report to the relevant Vorstand members."
The prospect of having no boss to bump up against - apart from the relatively hands-off board of WestLB, which owns WestMB - is another obvious attraction.
As someone who has spent a disproportionately long time in management positions, Briance has long been tagged a generalist. "His producing years were short," says one former colleague, "so he was perpetually a man under pressure from people tied to direct revenue streams".
Briance is keen to build on WestMB's strengths in Latin America, eastern Europe and Russia (where it has more tombstones for syndicated loans than any other bank), in fixed income and in cross-border corporate finance with Germany, as well as building a wider equity business from its current bases in London (it bought Panmure Gordon from Nationsbank last year) and Germany.
Briance likes to agree goals and then "give people significant operating latitude".
"I'm more a leader from the front than a micro-manager," he adds. "God that sounds awful, doesn't it." Only time and WestMB's performance will tell if his new employers are as fortunate to have him as many of his former colleagues think. Philip Eade