He's signed up from August 1 as executive chairman of Barclays Capital, which shuns equity trading and underwriting but is world number one in loan syndication and has been climbing the bond bookrunners' league table. Rudloff, born in Cologne in 1940 and educated in Switzerland, spent 10 years in the 1970s at Kidder Peabody in Geneva before being hired by Credit Suisse First Boston to head debt syndication. In 1982 he nearly completed his greatest syndication: a £27,000 deal to hire an elephant from Regent's Park zoo on which his boss Michael Von Clemm would ride through the City of London. Unfortunately Von Clemm got cold feet and vetoed the idea.
Rudloff spearheaded CSFB's finest years at the head of the Eurobond league tables and became chairman and chief executive in 1989. He also rose to the executive board of Credit Suisse in 1987 and moved to Switzerland in 1993.
Back in the 1980s Rudloff was already talking Barclays' book. "I refused to take on equity business at CSFB, it needs an enormous amount of people and money." But he changed his tune when creating his own vehicle MC Securities in 1995, which was mostly an equity house.