Bear Stearns has added three senior staff to its European special situations group, bringing the number of banks, private equity firms and hedge funds strengthening their distressed debt businesses this summer to more than a dozen.

The US investment bank, which has grown the number of staff in its London team by more than half to over 1,000 in the past three years as part of its European expansion push, has hired Joachim Koolmann as a senior managing director and Patrick McNellis and Stephen Hamilton as managing directors to meet "growing demand".