A number of senior bankers have defected from Edmond de Rothschild Group to found their own venture, after the Franco-Swiss group scrapped its UK merchant bank, the company said in a December 20 statement.

The team, led by Richard Briance, the former chief executive of Edmond de Rothschild's activities in London, has founded their own merchant bank called PMB Capital. The new business has been carved out of Edmond de Rothschild's private merchant banking unit in both the UK and Germany.