Advisers will get a slice of the limelight
ADVISING on Lord Levene and Sir David Walker’s new retail bank is a particularly lucrative piece of business for Cenkos and Kinmont, who have already been hard at work preparing the team for what one insider described as “a pugnacious couple of months” ahead.
Cenkos corporate broker Paul Hodges has so far been instrumental in leading the fundraising charge that has brought in around £2bn of investment from the institutions, aided and abetted by his counterpart Ian Soanes over in the firm’s corporate finance department.
Hodges, a former composite insurance analyst, joined Cenkos in March 2005. He previously worked under Terry Smith at Collins Stewart.
Thrust into the limelight as the other half of the advisory team is Kinmont, a boutique set up by former UBS corporate financier Gavin Kelly in 2003.
Kelly, a larger-than-life Scotsman famed for throwing some of the business world’s best parties, has offices near to Berkeley Square. His firm’s business spans public and private company, private equity and debt capital markets advisory services.
Though small, the firm does have a track record in helping to establish new financial services ventures.
It previously worked on setting up environmental exchange group Climate Exchange, bought out recently by US rival IntercontinentalExchange, and also advised on the setting up of London-listed insurance business Lancashire.