REAL ESTATE - Credit Suisse has poached senior managers from Deutsche Bank to head a new real estate finance business at its Australian investment bank.

The Swiss bank says the team – comprising investment banking heads David Dixon and Stephen Burns, property research head Chris Bedingfield, and traders John Barker and Jason Cooper – will meet demand from local and international clients for expertise in the global real estate industry.

The new team will start work later this year once its members have worked out their contracts with Deutsche.

Liz Rudall, a spokeswoman for the company, said: “It was a question of finding the right people. Finding a whole team is relatively rare. But they’re well regarded in the market, and they’ve been together a long time.”

Although no-one at Credit Suisse was willing to quantify the incentive, the team has left a bank ranked among the top five for M&A – a primary business for real estate financiers – for one that falls outside the top 10.

Property already makes up a significant percentage of the Australian investment banking business. Expansion into overseas markets funded with increased leverage has accelerated this growth.

The move follows the appointment in early March of Andrew Rosivach to head Credit Suisse’s new Sydney-based property equities research team.