That has included luring clients from larger banks They include the property millionaires David Rowland and Anton Bilton, and Michael Spencer, chief executive of the money broker Icap. Tony Ryan, chairman of budget carrier Ryanair, has taken a stake after being introduced to Durlacher by its chairman, Tony Caplin.Mr Stainforth says he and his team have been helped by some excellent timing. "I had a year before the market bottomed out, which was fine because it gave me a chance to build the business," he said.That has included luring clients from larger banks. He has also taken on Simon Hirst from Commerzbank and his twin Julian from UBS.An illustrious list of investors has also been brought in - many of whom, Mr Stainforth says, are "backers of me" rather than the business. He reduced the headcount from 170 to 7 and then built it back to 70 with his own hirings.These include some high-profile names, including Zoe Appleyard, the banker from NM Rothschild who used to dine out with tennis star Boris Becker. UBS, where Mr Stainforth worked, was one of its two financial advisers.The share offer sparked an investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry and in November 1989 Mr Stainforth, with nine others, was arrested on charges of allegedly misleading the market over the outcome of the rights issue.The investigation and trial - which led to Mr Stainforth's acquittal on Valentine's Day 1992 - took three and a half years. He has sold most ofits dot investments and offloaded the private client business to Charles Stanley, the brokerage, because it lacked the size to make serious money for Durlacher.The balance sheet has been spring-cleaned, with a £6m cash-raising and a consolidation of the shares, removing them from the list of penny stocks.Mr Stainforth says he is by nature "a builder rather than a cutter", but at Durlacher, which lost £45m in 2001, he had to cut first. You grow up if you have not already".Since then, he has worked for several well-known and not so famous establishments in the Square Mile, including Guinness Mahon, which was bought by Investec.Since joining from the small German investment bank Ermgassen, Mr Stainforth has set Durlacher in a more solid direction of being an investment bank for smaller companies, offering a rounded service from corporate finance advice to broker research. Such an experience, he says, "tells you a lot about yourself and about your marriage, which either gets much weaker or much stronger - in my case it got much stronger. Stephen O'Brien, the shadow industry secretary, said businesses could see a "clear difference" between the two main political parties."Under Labour businesses will continue to suffer and may be forced to relocate overseas," he said. "Under a Conservative government, business will be given the low tax and low regulation environment they demand to create the wealth, investment and jobs upon which we all depend."Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will hit back today at claims that the Government has made Britain less business-friendly.She will launch a report at the conference showing that the DTI's manufacturing advisory service has benefited companies by a total of £28m since its launch in April last year - an average £116,000 for each company assisted.The report will also show that the service has carried out health checks at more than 4,500 companies and responded to 15,400 enquiries. That is Blue Arrow - a recruitment company that in 1987 launched an £837m rights issue for an audacious takeover of bigger American rival Manpower.
One event stands out in the career of Mr Stainforth, described by some contemporaries as one of the most able men of his generation in the City. The gamble seems to be paying off.It might be the eight generals in his family history - there was a Stainforth in the Indian army from 1780 to 1947 - that gave him the wherewithal to get the business back into shape."If I had thought when I arrived 18 months ago that we would be here now I would have chucked my hat in the air," says Mr Stainforth.The banker is entering his fourth decade in the City, having gone straight from Eton to the accountancy firm Peat Marwick Mitchell, forerunner to KPMG, in 1972. The sleepy stockbroker turned itself into an investment bank for technology companies and was on the brink of entering the FTSE 100 when the tech bubble burst, causing its shares to crash and its business to dry up. In an attempt to rebuild, Durlacher turned to the incongruous choice of Christopher Stainforth, old Etonian, City veteran and fully paid-up member of the old boys' network, who was hired as chief executive in April last year. If any company's fortunes symbolise the frenzy of the dot boom and bust, those of Durlacher do. So far, though, the appetite to go down this road seems hardly to be there.I suspect, then, that the debate is not yet over for the eurozone. The shift from contraction to expansion is welcome news but the reasons behind this shift are less than convincing. Otmar Issing may be confident in his belief that there is no need to cut interest rates any further but should the dollar and Asian currencies continue to fall against the euro, the European Central Bank may have to think again about cutting interest rates.The story, then, has not reached a conclusion The eurozone is recovering in spite of itself. There is a way around this, namely for the eurozone to loosen domestic monetary and fiscal policy enough to ensure a switch away from export-led growth towards domestic demand-led growth. If part of the US recovery is dependent on a weak dollar, that recovery must be coming at the expense of the eurozone, not in support of the eurozone.Another way of putting this is that the eurozone is vulnerable to a continuous decline in its share of global trade and economic activity. If the policies pursued by the US and Asia imply continued euro strength - as they have done so far - eurozone growth inevitably will be constrained. Europe is perhaps being dragged along on the coat tails of success elsewhere in the world but it must be remembered that this is a relative game. Global growth may have picked up and eurozone GDP may have stopped contracting, but it is difficult to see why, under current policies, the eurozone should enjoy anything other than a weak and disappointing economic recovery. |
 |
 |
