Brent: Diplomatic hopes support pullback – Deutsche Bank

Alantra has joined Deutsche Bank in the City to provide advice on banking risk sales. The activity in this sector has surged in recent years, with Santander leading the way, and the bank aims to expand its team of 80 specialists in the financial sector. Banks have been increasing operations to pass on their risk to the market, maintain lending, and enhance solvency.

Alantra wants to become a key advisor for them. The bank has strengthened its presence with a new managing director, Zak Chaudary, who has hands-on experience in the significant risk transfer market (SRT) and understands banks' needs. Chaudary has spent nearly 20 years at Deutsche Bank, where he developed, structured, and executed the entity's risk transfer operations.

Deutsche Bank is one of the most active players in these transactions, allowing banks to sell packages of loans in good standing while freeing up capital for better solvency or lending with higher returns. Other banks, including Santander, Barclays, Intesa Sanpaolo, and BNP Paribas, have also ventured into SRT, which is no longer only attractive to large banks.

The International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM) reported in a recent study that more and more smaller entities are joining the trend, which has tripled over the past four years and amounted to €378 billion in the last fiscal year. Alantra aims to attract all possible business, and Chaudary's appointment is intended to reinforce this goal.

Along with the rest of Alantra's SRT specialists in London and Madrid, his task is to further strengthen advisory capabilities and organize operations of structured finance, supporting financial entities with customized solutions for credit risk transfer, optimizing regulatory capital, and strengthening their balance sheets. With this addition, Alantra surpasses 80 professionals in the Institutions Financials (FIG) team, advising banks, insurers, funds, and financial investors on capital, risk, and financing solutions, including public and private capitalizations, strategic alliances, portfolio operations, and mergers and acquisitions.

This team has completed over 350 operations since 2020 for a hundred clients worth approximately €170 billion, playing a crucial role during the financial crisis by disposing of toxic assets for BBVA, allowing it to emerge with a clean balance sheet. Alantra pioneered and executed in 2013 the sale of the "Hercules" portfolio, a large batch of failed loans from Catalunya Banc, valued at nearly €6.4 billion, marking the largest toxic asset sale in Europe to date, freeing BBVA from contamination.

The sale of credit portfolios remains active in the sector now, focusing on broader balance management needs and diverse, current payment assets, according to financial sources. Openbank recently sold a mortgage portfolio worth €750 million with Alantra's guidance, having also worked with Bank of Scotland, Helaba, and Piraeus Bank on its recent operations.

Chaudary's recruitment strengthens the London office, which has nearly 100 professionals. The UK is Alantra's second most important market after Spain, with the main objective in recent years being to make it one of the sector's three key centers, alongside Madrid and New York.