ABN Amro has added 30 senior corporate finance and coverage bankers to boost its European business in the first half of this year, despite sacking 500 of its equities staff in the same period.

The latest hires came last week with the appointment of Elvin Mayer, a former mergers and acquisitions director at ING Barings BHF, to join the automotive group in Frankfurt. With him will come three of his former ING Barings BHF colleagues, bringing the total number of corporate financiers in Germany at ABN Amro to about 20.