 |
| Honegger (left) and Peter: "we want Deutsche Bank to be on the podium or we do not participate" |
WHEN ED PETER arrived at Deutsche Bank's offices in Hong Kong in March 2001 to head Asian equities (ex-Japan) and global emerging markets, he quickly realized the scale of the task. Visiting the dealing floor on a mid-week lunchtime, he was surprised to see that all the desks were empty. "There was no-one around. I thought it must be one of those weird bank holidays," he says. "One of the phones rang: it was someone's girlfriend. I watched the phones for 20 minutes until one of the secretaries showed up. 'They're all at lunch,' she said when I asked. 'What if a client calls?' She put one hand on her hip and looked at me as if I was crazy. 'Clients don't call at lunchtime'".
Swiss-born and US-educated, Peter joined Deutsche Bank in Switzerland in 1999 to run equities operations after 10 years at UBS and its predecessor, SG Warburg. In 2001 he was transferred to Asia to try to fix the equities operation there.