Senior M&A bankers have been leaving Deutsche Bank and Barclays

Now that the no-show 2016 bonuses have hit bank accounts, senior M&A bankers are departing banks across the City, even if they have no new jobs to go to.

Not surprisingly, one of the exits has been at Deutsche Bank, which wiped out its bonus pool for anyone above vice president and has been losing senior employees since.

Arnaud Burger, a managing director and senior TMT investment banker, has just joined SocGen. Burger appears to have traded a bigger bank for a loftier title at a smaller institution and is now co-head of TMT corporate finance at SocGen.

Burger worked at Deutsche Bank for nearly 13 years, having joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch in September 2004.

This tactic is similar to Thomas Kratz, a director in Deutsche Bank’s TMT team who moved to Mizuho in August last year as head of European TMT.

Meanwhile, Patrick Gahan, head of the M&A and advisory business for the CEEMEA region at Barclays in London has also just departed. He appears to have left the bank without another role to move into. He has been at Barclays since December 2009, having joined from Dresdner Kleinwort where he worked for ten years as a managing director.

Much like Deutsche Bank, senior Barclays bankers have a reason to move on. Barclays’ bonus pool dropped by just 1% for front office staff this year, but variable pay for managing directors was disproportionately hit as it decided to increase junior bonuses in an attempt to retain talent.

Barclays has been losing some senior bankers in recent weeks. Mike Beadle, a managing director in its UK investment banking team, left in February and has just launched his own advisory firm, Kinnerton Capital. Haroon Rahmathulla, a managing director at Barclays, has just moved to Jefferies as head of chemicals investment banking, and David Lauffer, a healthcare banker in New York, joined RBC Capital Markets as a managing director earlier this month.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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