Société Générale has hired Michael Finkelman from BNP Paribas to head its leveraged finance business in the U.S. He will report to Powell Robinson, head of financing for the Americas, and to Rene de Laigue, who is the head of leveraged and acquisition finance. He started last Wednesday.
The bank is re-entering the market after more than a four-year absence and Finkelman will be focused on building up the business. He is the first hire for the expected team of 12. There are currently eight other people in the group, all internal moves. Finkelman expects Société Générale to do its first deal as a sole bookrunner by the end of the third quarter and has already started talking to clients about opportunities.
In January, de Laigue said the bank is looking to build a franchise in the middle market, focusing on the private equity relationships the European business has developed (CIN, 1/16). Robinson said Finkelman was hired based on his financial sponsor coverage background and his experience in the leveraged finance arena.
“I’ve been at BNP for 16 years and helped build that business from scratch and it was interesting, when I was approached by SG and I looked back on my 16 years in the business, I recognized the most fun I had was the opportunity to go and build a business,” Finkelman said. “When I built the business at BNP, I was the cook, the bottle washer, everything, it was a different base to start from. At SG... it seemed all the elements were there to be successful and the opportunity to build a business again was too much to pass up.”
Finkelman was a managing director in the merchant banking and leveraged finance group and a member of the group’s executive committee and the leveraged finance transaction screening committee at BNP.