Tim Plaut, the head of Goldman Sachs in Germany who has spearheaded the bank's development in the German market, is to leave the firm at the end of this year.

Plaut has run Goldman's German operations since a management reshuffle in February 2001. Before that he had been co-head of the business for two years and head of mergers and acquisitions in Germany and Austria. He will be replaced by the two co-heads of investment banking in Germany: Alex Dibelius, a former heart surgeon, and Wayne Moore, an American posted to Frankfurt in 2000.