Robin Saunders of Germany's WestLB is the woman pulling the strings at Pubmaster. Mark Stretton finds out what else she has planned.
The tabloids have labelled her the City version of Claudia Schiffer but her looks aside, Robin Saunders is fast earning the reputation as the ballsiest dealmaker in Britain.
Having bailed out Formula One, supported a potential bid for Marks & Spencer and this summer attempted a £22bn buy-out of BT's local-loop business, she has now trained her guns on Railtrack, the collapsed operator of Britain's rail network.
The head of asset securitisation and principal finance at Germany's Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) also pulls the strings of one of Britain's biggest pub companies - Pubmaster.
WestLB became the main stakeholder in the pub company when it bought the business last year in a consortium with Rotch Properties and St Modwen.
But with a further £1.2bn to invest on acquisitions, Robin and her team are ready to make the next takeover move.
Much of this vast war-chest is left over from the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries (W&DB) bid, one of the few deals that got away.
Through Pubmaster, Saunders and her finance group teamed up with entrepreneur Robert Breare in the ultimately failed £485m bid for W&DB.
"That was a great shame, most of all for W&DB shareholders," she said. "They lost a bid of 513p and the share price hasn't come anywhere near it since."
Both Robert Breare and Robin say that the bid failed because of investor apathy.
A few days before, some national newspapers wrote that the deal was in the bag. Although in favour of the bid, two large institutional shareholders did not feel the need to register their support, and W&DB won the fight to stay independent with 53 per cent.
The WestLB-Breare consortium is not allowed to bid again for 12 months unless a third party launches a takeover attempt.
But Saunders' reach in the sector already goes beyond Pubmaster, or rather Pubmistress as it is now known.
Last month she financed the largest ever management buy-out in Scotland. WestLB helped to bankroll the £200m acquisition of the Whyte & Mackay whisky business from Fortune Brands of the US. As well as the Whyte & Mackay label the deal included Invergordon Distillers' own-label business along with some vodka and liqueur brands.
Through the large pockets of WestLB, Saunders and her team pay for deals up front and then look to realise value from the newly acquired assets, mainly through securitisation.
This is a form of re-financing whereby a bond is raised against the value of the assets, or the value of projected income from those assets.
In the case of pubs, a company such as WestLB or Nomura would raise money against their estate based on future income from the rents on each pub. If Laurel Pub Company is not sold, it will look to raise about £1.2bn next year in this way.
Robin is currently regarded as the leading light in asset securitisation. WestLB is currently exploring the possibility of securitising the Whyte & Mackay whisky stocks, meaning that cash could be raised against future sales while the whisky matures. This would be the latest in an imaginative range of assets to be securitised.
Saunders insists WestLB is not looking for a quick buck but is a long-term owner of its pub and drinks interests. She is also looking to do the next deal within the sector. "We are long-term owners of these businesses," she said.
"We are quite happy to sit it out and we are actually looking to do the next deal. We look at everything that comes onto the market."
Robin says she looks to team up with entrepreneurs who really stand out from the crowd in their given sectors. This select band includes Philip Green, the retail entrepreneur, who, with WestLB's help, bought British Home Stores (BhS), John Sands and the Pubmaster management and Robert Breare of Noble House Leisure.
"We have a lot of time for these people," she says. "We don't go in and turn operations upside down. We bring together great management and serious financial power."
She describes Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One king who last year earned more than £700m, as a constant inspiration. The duo worked together during the Formula One £1.4bn bond issue. "He's wonderful, she says, "I aspire to be entrepreneurial. I think bankers could learn a lot from these people with their ability to think laterally, to take risks, and be so tenacious."
With her can-do attitude and her willingness to do the big deals, many would argue Robin is more than half way there.
Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, she studied dance and finance, although presumably not in that order, at Florida State University. Dancing is still a passion and is how she relaxes when not chasing deals. But rather than the tap or ballroom variety as might be expected of someone of Robin's status, she prefers to shake-out with some hip hop.
She regularly attends a class devoted to the music "somewhere" in London. "I'm the grandmother of the class," she said. "All the other girls are between 15 and 20. They all tend to wear a lot less than I do and have many more body piercings." She is quick to add that, so far, she has resisted her classmates' passion for piercing.
She says she spends most of her spare time at home with her husband, Matthew Roeser, and their 15-month-old twin daughters, Ella and Savannah.
At the tender age of 39 she is by no means the grandmother of the City but she does have one of the hottest seats in town.
Did she find it hard to break into the male preserve of corporate banking? "At first it was incredibly difficult, surprisingly it was much more of an issue here than elsewhere in Europe. But it's no longer a hindrance - I've been here in the UK 10 years now."
Saunders came to work in Britain from Chicago with Citibank. From there she moved to Chase Manhattan to join four other bankers in a principal finance team.
Those five financiers, Saunders included, moved to Deutsche Bank and in 1999 Saunders joined WestLB taking a finance team of nine with her.
"It's a great platform for this business," she said. "The bank is highly ambitious and very acquisitive - we are looking to buy all the time." Robin, a self-confessed workaholic, said she will be doing deals until the day she drops.
Last week she met with Railtrack administrators from Ernst & Young to discuss her proposals that would see the operator's shareholders receive between 240p and 300p a share. She is confident a deal can be done whereby a for-profit company could emerge, with the Government taking responsibility for passenger safety. Robin has rightly taken the mantle of the most exciting financier in country from Guy Hands, head of Nomura's Principal Finance Group. Nomura has put Inn Partnerships, one of its three pub companies, up for sale for £500m. With Hands preparing to exit the Japanese bank, it would not be surprising nor inappropriate if Robin and her backers were to emerge as the new owners of the 1,200-strong pub group.
Robin and her team have driven through a phenomenal number of deals, but she insists this is only the beginning.
What they say
Philip Green, the retail entrepreneur who Saunders backed to buy Marks and Spencer then BhS: "She moves quickly. She agreed to back the BhS deal within four days and we got the deal done in just 19 days."
Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One King, after she completed a $1.4bn bond issue: "She has done what she said she would do, and that is unique. I am a straight-talking kind of person and so is she."
Robert Tchenguiz, co-head of Rotch Property Group which has worked with Saunders on a number of deals: "If she sets her heart on something, she will do it. She's very bright, dyn