Investec Specialist Private Bank has bolstered its growth and acquisition finance team with the addition of Stephen White, latterly of Barclays.

In his new role White will focus on sourcing and executing leveraged finance deals with entrepreneurs, management teams and private equity firms in order to provide finance to mid-market companies looking to borrow between £5 million ($8.2 million)  and £30 million, the firm said. Investec’s acquisition team now comprises six investment professionals.

While with Barclays, White was a senior member of the financial sponsors’ portfolio team, with responsibility for sourcing and executing leveraged finance deals. His other focus was restructuring and refinancing debt in existing businesses.

Investec, like a number of other UK banks, predicts a significant uplift in leveraged loan activities as private equity firms begin to shun the high-yield bond markets and seek alternative financing sources. Banks have of course relaxed on pricing significantly over the past year.

Earlier this month Investec reported a steep fall in its private banking profits for the first quarter of the year. Having stood at ZAR336 million (around $48.7 million) for the first quarter of 2010, the unit's profits fell to ZAR47 million for Q1 2011 – a drop of 86 per cent.

Investec blamed low activity levels and increased impairments for its poor performance in private banking, but said its private client core lending book grew by 4.2 per cent to ZAR83 billion and its deposit book grew by 9.6 per cent to ZAR56.1 billion over the same period.

Between end-March 2010 and end-March 2011, operating income from private banking at Investec dropped by 12.9 per cent, from 1.7 billion to 1.5 billion, while expenses increased by 5.5 per cent, from ZAR1.3 billion to ZAR1.4 billion. The resulting decrease in cost to income ratio from 61.8 per cent to 56.5 per cent also went some way to explaining the big drop in private banking profits.

Overall pre-tax profits at the group also fell, although by significantly less, from ZAR2.5 billion to ZAR2.4 billion – a drop of 4.4 per cent. But, after tax, profits at the group actually increased by 13.8 per cent, from ZAR2 billion to ZAR2.3 billion.