Westimmo's Peter Denton to join BNP Paribas

Peter Denton, a managing director and head of financial sponsors coverage at German bank Westimmo, is moving to French bank BNP Paribas in April as head of real estate finance.

BNP is hoping to grow its share of the debt-deprived UK lending market which has witnessed a number of big lenders, particularly German banks, withdraw from the market in recent months. The exodus has been fuelled by the new Basel III banking regulations, which stipulate that banks will have to hold more capital on their books, which makes property lending less profitable and is also expected to put a dampener on new lending.

In December, DG Hyp told PropertyEU that it would close its international offices in New York, London, Paris and Warsaw within the next year. Another German lender HSH Nordbank is also withdrawing from the UK.

London-based Denton, who joined Westimmo in September 2008, is leaving at a challenging time for the bank. State-owned WestLB bank was initially ordered to sell Westimmo, its Wiesbaden-based property lending arm, by the end of last year. The European Commission is forcing WestLB to sell its property bank in return for allowing the German government to bail out WestLB with EUR 3 bn. However, despite three bids for Westimmo in July last year, WestLB called off the sale in October after 'disappointing bids', a Westimmo spokesman told PropertyEU at the time.

Private equity groups are the most likely buyers for WestImmo, because they have the financial means to put together a deal of this kind. However, according to analysts, the bank is likely to sell for significantly less than its book value, which is believed to be less than EUR 600 mln.