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WACHOVIA’S MAN ABROAD

MAITLAND BRUCE OVERSEES THE U.S. BANK’S EXPANSION INTO EUROPEAN MARKETS

By Nicky Godding

Maitland Bruce has truly had his head in the clouds. Not that Wachovia Corp. has cause to rue its decision to name him managing director of European fixed income and head of structured finance. No indeed; it is simply that Bruce took flying lessons earlier in the year, and he flew solo for the very first time just one day before starting the new job, in London, in August.

And yet Bruce is hardly the only one flying. He joins Wachovia just as the bank company spreads its own wings across Europe. Wachovia has opened five offices in Germany and one in London in a bid to build its investment banking business in the region. Bruce’s job is to supervise the structuring, execution and distribution of real estate principal banking products there.

“I joined Wachovia with a fairly broad remit to help step up the bank’s push into the European property market,” he said. “Prior to my joining, the European business was focused on small loan origination in Germany. Going forward I expect us to be looking at the wider gambit of real estate transactions.” These include bridge finance, property and operating company loans, stand-alone mezzanine investments and large loan origination, he says.

This is another bold step for Wachovia, which has in a relatively short time built its real estate business into a category killer, says Bruce. “Simply based on the volume of deals done by our U.S. business, we are already one of the largest issuers of commercial-mortgage-based securities on a global basis,” he said. “Given our market share, our strategy is to develop the business into new geographical markets.”

Bruce’s current job is a long way from his whimsical childhood ambitions: actor, policeman, football player, fighter pilot. (The flying lessons may go some of the way toward fulfilling that last one.)

After what he describes as a happy childhood in Kensington, a leafy, upmarket area of London, Bruce received a degree in land management from Reading University and then got a master’s from Cambridge in the same discipline. Those degrees helped him secure his first job, at commercial real estate advisory firm Richard Ellis (now CB Richard Ellis). He discovered he was more interested in banking, however, so he joined the mergers and acquisitions division of Lazard Bros. (today called simply Lazard). Bruce went on to work for UBS, Hypo Real Estate International and, most recently, German property lender Eurohypo.

Now, with 15 years of investment banking and real estate experience under his belt, Bruce is one of Europe’s leading commercial mortgage loan originators. He has also demonstrated a talent for nurturing new business lines, perhaps best evidenced at Hypo Real Estate, which he worked to reposition from a “traditional German bank” to a leading name in property and operating company financing, B-notes and bridge finance, before those markets took off.

Bruce calls this his biggest success to date. “I joined the company prior to the spin-off of the business from HypoVereinsbank at the time when it was considered to be an unloved and likely-to-be-short-lived business.” Bruce was part of the small band that built Hypo into a Dax (Deutsche Aktien Xchange) 30 company.

“My career has always been linked to real estate, and I have been lucky enough to have had exposure to the sector in an M&A advisory capacity, from a fixed-income perspective and in traditional commercial banking,” Bruce said.

Wachovia is a household name in the U.S., where it is the fourth-largest bank holding company and the third-largest full-service retail brokerage. In Europe though, it is still considered a startup, albeit a startup with the advantage of belonging to one of the largest banks in the world.

“The basis of our future success in the medium term isn’t very complicated,” said Bruce. “We have to build brand recognition locally, and the only way we’re going to do that is by being consistently out there in the marketplace and closing deals.”

Since his Wachovia appointment, Bruce has wasted no time in throwing himself right into the party. “Obviously, I can’t go into detail about specific transactions we are working on, but they do range from a typical construction facility for a retail scheme in Germany to funding a stand-alone piece of mezzanine debt on a sizable sale-and-leaseback project in Europe. However, my interest is currently aimed at how we best benefit from the tighter liquidity that has beset the debt markets recently.”

This is the issue facing everyone in retail real estate financing in the U.S. and Europe. But despite the market uncertainties likely to make Wachovia’s European climb steep and long, Bruce says he is determined to build significant market share in a market that sources say is already crowded. “My ambition is to be a key part of a team which starts and then over the next few years delivers a business platform which is of equal standing to the business that we have developed in the United States,” he said.

Bruce reports to Bill Green, former head of real estate capital in the U.S., who relocated to London this fall to head the European real estate division. “Maitland’s combined experience, client relationships and established success at growing new businesses will be tremendous assets as we continue to build out our European real estate capital markets practice,” Green said.

Bruce says his wife, a passionate gardener, is one of the most inspirational people in his life. He says he frequently pulls on a pair of old Wellington boots to act as the head gardener’s assistant and get his hands dirty supporting her garden design ambitions. “If I’m not clocking up flying hours to improve my proficiency, I spend much of my spare time and money supporting her projects,” he said.

But labor in Wachovia’s vineyard, of course, is what takes up most of his time. “As you get older, I think, it is the prospect of doing those transformational deals that is a real draw,” he said. “Whether because they are a first of their kind or eye-wateringly sizable.”