Investec banker brushes off “complete criminals” insult from PR guru Lord Bell
A Senior Investec banker last night shrugged off insults made last week by PR guru Lord Bell.
Bell, who counts Investec among his firm Bell Pottinger’s clients, claimed bankers were “complete criminals”.
But Investec’s head of investment banking Andrew Pinder is happy to move on, simply referring to the comments as “an interesting view”.
“He seems to have apologised for it,” Pinder told City PM “People tend to move on reasonably quickly from these sort of things.”
His comments came as Pinder discussed Investec’s success in the merger and acquisition markets – the specialist investment bank had advised on more deals than any other institution since the start of 2012, according to Mergermarket data published yesterday.
“Confidence levels are reasonably good in the board room at the moment and people are prepared to look at buying assets,” said Pinder. “We are not at ridiculous valuations yet, so it is not a bad time to buy. An M&A surge is still to come.”
The latest deal is HG Capital’s £109.6m bid for Allocate Software.
Investec will today appoint former UBS banker Christian Hess to run its private equity advisory business. Hess co-founded UBS’ financial sponsor group in 1998.