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ABN Amro boosts European leveraged finance business with major hires

ABN Amro has made a number of senior appointments in a bid to bolster its presence as a leading advisor and provider of leveraged finance to the increasingly active European private equity buy-out market.

‘Our pipeline for financial sponsor deals backed by leveraged funding is exceptionally strong and we are building a team that will play an increasingly significant role as this activity continues to grow,' said Chris Kirkness, European head of financial sponsors at ABN Amro.

Wieland Janssens joins the bank as a managing director in the financial sponsors group from Schroder Salomon Smith Barney where he held a similar role.

Oleg Pankratov and Steve Jones have joined ABN Amro's leveraged finance teams from JP Morgan's corporate securitisation and leveraged finance teams respectively. Ajan van Rijn joins as a director from the leveraged finance syndicate at Deutsche Bank.

‘The enhanced team will enable us to offer a single platform for leveraged finance, whole business securitisation, future flow, bespoke and infrastructure capital deals, staffed by some of the most experienced talent in the market,' said Gavin Alexander, global head of structured capital at ABN Amro.

ABN Amro focuses on later-stage buy-outs valued at over E100m. Last year the bank acted as sole advisor to Candover on its E1bn acquisition of hygiene group Ontex, the largest ever leveraged buy-out and public to private deal in Belgium.

In addition, the bank has recently supported 3i's acquisition of Telefoongids in The Netherlands, BC Partners' acquisition of Telecolumbus in Germany, CVC's acquisition of Danske Traelast in Denmark, and NIB Capital's acquisition of the human resources unit of Getronics in The Netherlands.

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