Not only does Andrew Pisker, who took the post in October, confront a brutal deal environment, but he must also turn around an unprofitable firm riven by cultural clashes and doubts about the commitment of its parent, Allianz. Can he do it?
“If the job were impossible, I wouldn’t have taken it,” says Pisker.
The 41-year-old Pisker, who succeeds Leonhard Fischer, was handpicked by Dresdner Bank’s chief executive, Bernd Farholz, based on his record running the bank’s global debt business, the only profitable division over the past year. Pisker oversaw the consolidation of DrKW’s debt and equity capital markets units. All told, DrKW has slashed costs by 40 percent in the past two years. The Englishman insists costs are under control. “We are ahead of the curve,” he says.
That still leaves a long straightaway. DrKW lost E250 million ($246 million) in the first half, and insiders say that morale has been further hit by Allianz’s reluctance to squash rumors that it wants out of the business. Fischer was forced out in September for proposing to keep DrKW separate from Dresdner and prep it for a merger.
Pisker concedes that fewer investment banks are needed in the market’s “longest sustained bad patch ever,” so it’s time to prove that the leaner DrKW can perform. Investment banking is in a “batten-down-the-hatches mode,” he says. “We’ve got to get through it and hope some others fall along the way.”
