Alex Seippel, Founder, the Roundstone Group
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Alex Seippel, Founder, the Roundstone Group

Ruggero Magnoni, Vice-chairman, Lehman Brothers (Europe)

Victor Basta, Managing director, Europe, Broadview


"We looked at all sorts of places," says Alex Seippel. Glancing up at the high ceiling with its decorative plaster mouldings, he adds, "none of them had quite the right character." Roundstone's spacious office in London's Mayfair has an air of faded grandeur that is fittingly reminiscent of what now passes as office architecture in eastern Europe - somewhere Seippel has spent much of his working life. It is also where his recently formed consultancy firm is targeting advice in risk management, corporate finance and corporate restructuring.

Seippel became co-head of Merrill Lynch's Russian investment banking and capital markets business in April last year. But when Russia defaulted in August, he saw that "the business wasn't going anywhere. I started to talk to people about doing other things". With banks retreating from emerging markets and investors more cautious about providing capital, most of the opportunities lay on the advisory side. Such work, Seippel decided, could be done equally well by a "private professional operation" - a realization that dovetailed with his desire to start his own business. An independent operation, he reasoned further, would have the edge when it came to providing "objective advice".


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