The news of Edson Mitchell's untimely death at the age of 47 has cast a pall over the Euromarkets and the entire banking industry. Do not be under any doubt that Edson was the King of the Euromarkets. He wore that particular crown ever since Hans-Joerg Rudloff was toppled by CSFB insiders in March 1993 and exiled to the Siberia of Credit Suisse HQ. The only pretenders to Mitchell's throne were Connie Voldstad at Merrill, Chris Goekjian at CSFB and Robert Diamond at Barclays Capital. Mitchell was the quintessential $20m a year man who looked the part, loved every minute of life and delivered results time after time when his competitors and imitators could make only shallow promises. Edson's greatest success was in building a world class debt capital markets and equities business for Deutsche Bank from grass roots. When he started to lay the foundations in 1995 we were sceptical about his chances of success - silly us. By his charm and sheer force of personality (an open cheque book from Deutsche also helped the process) Mitchell created in four years what JP Morgan had failed to achieve in 15. It was a stunning accomplishment and marked Mitchell as someone who was simply in a different class from his contemporaries. Look at the recent flabby performance of Goldman Sachs or CSFB in fixed income. How much would they have paid to have Mitchell on their side? If he had auctioned himself with a reserve of $50m per annum for a five year contract there would have been no shortage of bidders.
January 05, 2001
