Deutsche Bank's Korea IB head quits after country head resigns

Cho Man Chul, managing director and head of investment banking at Deutsche Bank in Korea, has resigned, according to people with knowledge of the matter on Sunday, following the departure of Seungeun Ahn as its country manager in South Korea in January.

Cho wants to take a break before pursuing new opportunities, according to the sources. Ahn moved to Stonepeak Partners to lead the US alternative investment firm’s South Korean operations as chairman. 

The two had been working at Deutsche Bank for more than 10 years. Their resignations came around the time that Shinna Oh, a former executive of its South Korean investment banking operations, left the bank just a few months after assuming the role.

Oh now works at the Seoul office of Jefferies, a US-based investment firm specializing in the debt capital market.

The exact reasons for the trio's departures are unknown. But market speculation is that they might have felt challenged after Samuel Kim took over as chairman of Deutsche Bank’s M&As for Asia Pacific in September last year.

Kim had joined from Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong after a stint at MBK Partners, a private equity firm. He leads Deutsche Bank’s South Korean operations as chairman as well in Seoul. 

Cho has led Deutsche Bank’s M&A advisory business since joining the bank in 2013.

In 2020, he was promoted to the role of managing director, becoming the first Korean banker who rose to the position at a foreign bank with only a track record in the domestic financial market.

The veteran banker has built a career in the investment banking advisory sector at Woori Investment & Securities, now NH Investment & Securities.

Cho had previously worked at Mirae Asset Management and Mirae Asset Capital. He graduated from the Department of Business Administration of the prestigious Seoul National University in 1998.

In 2007, he joined the Bank of America Merrill Lynch and in 2013 moved to Deutsche Bank, along with Ahn and Lee Dong-hwan, another C-suite executive of Deutsche Bank in South Korea.

As the Deutsche Bank’s top investment banker in South Korea, he had advised MBK Partners on its 7.2-trillion-won ($5.6 billion) purchase of Homeplus, a big-box supermarket chain operator in 2015.

Other high-profile M&A deals he advised were AB InBev’s 6.2-trillion-won acquisition of Oriental Brewery in 2014; Carlyle Group’s 2-trillion-won takeover of ADT Caps, a securities system provider; Hana Securities Private Equity’s 1.2-trillion-won purchase of SK E&S Co.’s power generation business in a package deal; and Lotte Group’s 1-trillion-won acquisition of KT Rental.

Since the start of this year, Deutsche Bank has reinforced staff by hiring a large number of junior workers.

However, industry observers said the departures of the top-level managers would leave a void in its investment banking business in South Korea that is unlikely to be filled in the near future.

Write to Jun-Ho Cha at chacha@hankyung.com


Yeonhee Kim edited this article.