Former Berenberg Bond Trader Team Resurfaces Under a New Roof

(Bloomberg) -- The Vienna-based fixed-income team that left German lender Joh. Berenberg Gossler & Co. last year has returned under a new roof in a bid to reclaim old business.

After several months of gardening leave, the seven-member team headed by Robert Hengl joined Austria’s Hypo-Bank Burgenland AG and has already completed its first private placements. “We have reported back to our customers over the past few weeks and many of them are now working with us again,” Hengl said.

He hopes to build on some niche markets the team has carved out in the past, mainly covering German speaking countries and Eastern Europe. For example, it trades Lithuanian government bonds. “You don’t get those everywhere,” said Hengl.

The team is also active in primary markets and helps issuers to place smaller bonds and Schuldscheine -- an alternative way to raise funds instead of loans or bonds -- with deals usually not exceeding 150 million euros ($169 million).

The recruitment of Hengl’s team gives Bank Burgenland the chance to expand its capital markets business at a time when Berenberg is retreating in some areas. The Austrian lender wants to broaden its earnings base, Chief Executive Officer Christian Jauk said. No further hirings are planned.

Berenberg, one of the world’s oldest banks, closed its fixed-income operation in Vienna because of the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID II. The new regulations mean that “it is no longer viable to operate the fixed income business located there,” the bank said February, when it reported that 2018 profit slumped by about three quarters.

Hengl’s team has been together for about 13 years. The bankers started out at Oesterreichische Volksbanken AG before switching to Berenberg in 2010.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephan Kahl in Frankfurt at skahl@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Erhard Krasny at ekrasny@bloomberg.net, Andrew Blackman

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