Ernst & Young has hired a new partner for its corporate finance team despite plans to make 200 redundancies in the UK, including some in corporate finance.

Christoph Waltenspuel has joined the energy, chemicals and utilities corporate finance team in London as a partner. He joins from Enron Europe, the European arm of US energy group Enron, where he was vice-president in charge of developing the company's retail activities in the German-speaking market. Prior to that he was Enron's head of corporate finance origination.