Few people have as good a reputation for building up and developing a Latin American investment banking business from scratch as Stephen Cunningham.
Now 52, Mr Cunningham is one of the veterans of the region, with some of the biggest corporate transactions ever done in the region under this belt. In 1998, he worked alongside Citi’s Alberto Verme on the $19bn privatisation of Brazil’s state telephone monopoly, Telebras. “Alberto and I have competed against one another for some 20 years now,” he laughs.
More recent highlights include last year’s $2.8bn restructuring of Telecom Argentina, the country’s largest ever corporate restructuring. Will he now be able to rework his magic at Deutsche, which he left Morgan Stanley to join in April of this year? “Yes,” is Mr Cunningham’s unequivocal response.
With Deutsche being traditionally strong in fixed income, it will be up to him to build up its M&A and corporate finance capabilities in Latin America. True, these days competition from other banks is stiffer. On the other hand, there is also a lot more appetite for Latin American risk than when Mr Cunningham started out. “Do you honestly think there are investors out there who would buy shares of Latin American companies?” he recalls being asked as he trail-blazed some of the first equities offerings out of Latin America in the early 1990s. That is an indication of just how much times have changed.
