Paul Achleitner (int'l edition)

The Apr. 5 collapse of the proposed $30 billion merger of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank could have been a major setback for Paul Achleitner, one of the deal's leading architects. But the chief financial officer of Allianz Group, Germany's mighty insurer, is unfazed. ''The restructuring of corporate Germany will continue,'' he says. ''Sharper global competition coupled with greater shareholder activism is driving the process forward. It won't come to a stop just because of the Deutsche-Dresdner debacle.''

No one knows the German merger-and-acquisition scene better than Achleitner, 43. As head of Goldman, Sachs & Co. in Frankfurt through most of the 1990s, he masterminded a series of M&A deals and privatizations that triggered German restructuring. Now as CFO of Allianz, he plans to accelerate the trend by selling off many of the major stakes that the Munich-based giant owns in BASF, Vivendi, and other leading Continental companies. ''It's in our interests to sell some of our nonstrategic shareholdings and reinvest the proceeds in companies that correspond to our core businesses,'' he explains. As he does that, dozens of companies will become takeover targets because they will lack the protection of Allianz--their major shareholder.

He may be an Austrian by birth, but Achleitner is almost a household name in Germany. He and his wife Ann-Kristin Achleitner, professor of banking and financial management at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel near Wiesbaden, make up the golden couple of German finance. Achleitner studied economics at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and then did an MBA at Harvard University. He worked in New York for Bain & Co. before joining Goldman in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall collapsed.

BRIGHT BANKER. At Goldman, Achleitner was responsible for privatizing large chunks of East German industry. His success in that area convinced many German executives and politicians that the New York-headquartered Goldman was a better investment bank than the German universal banks.

Under Achleitner, Goldman was retained to help privatize Deutsche Telekom. It also advised Daimler-Benz in the negotiations for its $36 billion merger with Chrysler Corp. in 1998. Achleitner quickly became Germany's premier investment banker. He joined Allianz, he says, because ''I wanted to help foster change in the German economy from the inside.'' Shares in the insurer leapt 4% last Sept. 15, when his appointment was announced. They've risen 40% since.

Achleitner will be helped by the German government's plans to abolish capital-gains taxes on the sale of listed companies' shares in other listed companies. The reform, which takes effect at the start of next year, will make it far more attractive for big investors like Allianz to sell off their stakes in industry. He signaled what was in store less than three months after joining Allianz on Jan. 1. In March, he helped broker the landmark merger agreement between Deutsche and Dresdner, Germany's largest and third-largest banks. The plan called for Allianz to swap its stakes in the two banks for Deutsche's asset management subsidiary DWS and part of the bank's retail network.

CHANGES AFOOT. Although the deal subsequently collapsed due to differences over the fate of Dresdner's investment banking subsidiary, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, it shows how far Achleitner will go to reshape Allianz' $40 billion-plus portfolio, and the enormous impact his actions could have. If it had gone through, say financiers, the Deutsche-Dresdner deal would have transformed German finance.

Either way, it wasn't long before Achleitner had negotiated a second major restructuring move. On May 4, Allianz and reinsurer Munich Re, which hold 25% stakes in each other, agreed to reduce their cross-shareholdings to 20% and swap some of the stakes they own in several companies, such as Munich insurer Bayerische Versicherungen. The move will free billions of dollars and could spark the most extensive restructuring of German industry since World War II.

Still, there are limits to Achleitner's Anglo-Saxon tendencies. He dislikes hostile takeovers and recognizes that companies have to take the interests of employees into account. ''Stakeholders as well as shareholders also play a decisive role in companies,'' he says. But that won't stop his forging ahead with some eye-popping deals that will send shock waves through Europe's largest economy and speed restructuring both at home and abroad.

Paulo Pereira (int'l edition)

Europe's leading dealmaker last year was an intense 37-year-old from Portugal. Paulo Pereira, head of the telecom group at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in London, figured in an eye-popping $178 billion in mergers, according to London-based mergermarket.com.

No matter that Pereira was on the losing side of the biggest of those--Vodafone AirTouch PLC's $163 billion hostile takeover of Germany's Mannesmann. He helped orchestrate Mannesmann's defense, which made clear the potential of the mobile Internet. ''There are many definitions of winning,'' Pereira says. He also advised France Telecom on its $46 billion acquisition of Orange PLC from Vodafone AirTouch on May 30.

Accustomed to working all-nighters, Pereira also helped upstart cable operator NTL Inc. snatch the residential cable unit of Cable & Wireless Communications away from Telewest Communications PLC and its backers, Microsoft Corp. and Liberty Media Group. This $19 billion gambit made NTL the leader in cable in Britain.

Pereira thinks telecom deals, once a sleepy backwater, will get even hotter. Morgan Stanley is planning to double its corps of 30 bankers dedicated to telecom. Maybe that means Pereira will have more time for his wife and two daughters. Last year he spent most of the Christmas holidays at the side of Mannesmann Chairman Klaus Esser.

Carl Palmstierna (int'l edition)

Two years ago, Carl Palmstierna gave up his job at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in London and moved back to his native Sweden to invest in technology startups. Smart move. Palmstierna, 46, has helped found about a dozen companies, including Altitun, a Swedish optical company that was sold to Minneapolis-based ADC Telecommunications for $960 million.

Palmstierna has provided a valuable link between Swedish entrepreneurs and global markets. ''Sweden has an excellent technology base,'' he says. ''But its venture-capital and private equity markets have not been very sophisticated.'' His $150 million private equity fund, Industrial Development & Capital, is helping to change that.

Josef Ackermann (int'l edition)

Josef Ackermann is smiling. Never mind the humiliating collapse of the proposed merger of Deutsche Bank and rival Dresdner Bank in April, caused partly by his insistence that Dresdner sell its investment banking unit. Ackermann, Deutsche Bank's chief of investment banking, survived the debacle.

Deutsche Bank has long suffered ridicule for its costly effort to compete with the likes of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Goldman, Sachs & Co. But Ackermann, 52, insists the effort is finally bearing fruit. In Europe, Deutsche Bank shot from eighth in 1999 to second so far this year in IPO issuance, behind Goldman Sachs, according to Capital Data Inc. Investment banking was a key driver in Deutsche Bank's first-quarter profit of $864 million, a 50% increase from a year earlier. ''We're profit-oriented,'' Ackermann says. Eventually, he wants Deutsche Bank to be among the world's top three advisers on mergers and acquisitions. Deutsche Bank is 14th so far this year.

Ackermann has tirelessly tried to infuse Deutsche Bank with more drive and entrepreneurial spirit. He joined the bank in 1996 from Credit Suisse Group, where he was CEO, after a falling out with the chairman over a restructuring plan. Although he's eyeing the top job at Deutsche, Ackermann brushes off reports of rivalry with CEO Rolf-E. Breuer. ''We get along well,'' he says. And he smiles.

Guy Hands (int'l edition)

He may not look like a shark, but he's one of Europe's shrewdest young dealmakers. Guy Hands, 40, has helped put the private equity industry on Europe's business map. The Oxford graduate walked out of Goldman Sachs International in 1994 and set up shop at the London offices of Japan's Nomura International PLC. Since then, he has notched up some $15 billion in deals as chief of Nomura International's Principal Finance Group. ''He is one of the finest financial brains in the City,'' says a competitor.

Hands goes where the cookie-cutter LBO firm rarely strays. He is bidding to take over Britain's much-maligned Millennium Dome. He has become Britain's second-largest owner of pubs, controlling five different chains with 4,750 establishments. He has also made big profits buying and selling a railroad rolling-stock leasing business and William Hill, a betting-parlor chain. And he is interested in managing the real estate of the government's tax authority, the Inland Revenue Service. That is potentially a $3 billion project over 20 years.

Hands doesn't have to disclose how much he has made for Nomura International, but sources say it is more than $1.9 billion after paying the Japanese parent one-quarter point plus the LIBOR rate on its capital. A lot of his profits have come from sophisticated reconfigurations of his acquisitions' finances.

With many more players in the game, things may get tougher. But with his smarts and drive, Hands will still be a winner.

Ronald Cohen (int'l edition)

Back in 1972, before many of Europe's current crop of hot financiers were born, a young Harvard University Business School graduate named Ronald Cohen founded a European venture capital firm called Apax Partners & Co. Cohen concedes that he and his partner, Paris-based Maurice Tchenio, acted a bit prematurely in trying to raise money to invest in European technology companies.

But now they are sitting pretty. Apax Partners manages close to $7 billion, with about $4 billion of that targeted at Europe. And Cohen has played a big role in backing such major successes as Autonomy, perhaps Britain's most successful Internet company, and Jazztel, a zooming Spanish business phone services company. In the 1990s, Apax' returns averaged 45% net of fees. It has made about $600 million on its original $3 million investment in Autonomy.

Cohen, 54, says that the blossoming of high tech in Europe, Israel, and India has confirmed his view that venture capital should be a global business. Apax is well-covered in the U.S. through a partnership with venture capitalist Alan Patricof. In Israel, a $2.7 million investment in e-mail provider Commtouch is now worth $25 million.

Cohen has come a long way. He credits his fluency in five languages to his upbringing in Cairo, where he went to a French school. Once in Britain, he did well enough in school to be accepted at Oxford and then went on to Harvard Business School on a scholarship. A stint at McKinsey & Co. followed.

As a pioneer, Cohen has also helped found the British and European venture-capital associations. And he has funded the fledgling Easdaq stock exchange as well as Tradepoint Financial Networks, an electronic rival to the London Stock Exchange, because he didn't think the traditional exchanges were doing enough to raise money for new companies.

Cohen's success has earned him a niche as a patron of the arts and adviser to the British government, which wants to instill entrepreneurship in the local economy. He is especially fond of music. But, to his regret, he has never learned to play an instrument--though his wife, a film producer, recently treated him to piano lessons. That could be a new challenge if he ever decides to slow down.