Deutsche Bank's ex-corporate finance head joins Swiss boutique

Edward Chandler, a veteran Deutsche Bank investment banker who until recently was chairman of its corporate finance business, has re-emerged at boutique Swiss investment bank Soditic.

Chandler officially signed up to the Geneva-based bank’s London office last week, according to filings on the Financial Conduct Authority. He is one of 11 employees in regulatory approved roles at the bank in London and the first recruit since February.

Chandler spent 19 years at Deutsche Bank, and was latterly chairman of global corporate finance at the bank. Before this, he worked in M&A at SG Warburg Group. Chandler left Deutsche Bank in June 2014, according to regulatory filings.

Soditic was initially launched in 1971, but over the course of a series of buyouts became part of SG Warburg in 1990. By 1996, after the acquisition of Warburg by what later became UBS, the Geneva-based bank was re-launched by founder Maurice Dwek as a "vehicle for his own interests". He died in 2013 aged 81.

Marc Dwek and Edward Dwek are currently listed as chief executive and director of Soditic respectively. Soditic is credited with breaking the ‘cartel’ of the big three Swiss banks in corporate bond issuance in the 1980s.

A number of senior Deutsche Bank investment bankers have left in recent months after its Strategy 2020 initiative was unveiled in April. This signals a retreat from the universal banking model and could result in some big job cuts across the organisation.

Murray Roos, co-head of equities and prime finance, joined Citigroup, while managing director Simon Grenfell, global head of commodities structuring and origination left, and Karsten Le Blanc, a managing director in key client partners, joined Credit Suisse as head of UHNWI UK.