Boutique investment bank Compass Partners has launched a joint venture with Italian rival adviser Rondelli Advisers.

The deal will be signed this week and the new venture will be called Compass Rondelli Advisers. It will be run by Philip Keevil, a partner at Compass in London, and Saverio Rondelli, who launched his boutique in September after leaving German bank WestLB where he was head of mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets. Compass and Rondelli have agreed a fee-sharing arrangement on cross-border Italian deals. A month after opening the boutique, Rondelli won his first mandate, advising private equity firm Candover on its €1.7bn ($2.2bn) acquisition of Ferretti, an Italian luxury yachtmaker in Italy's biggest leveraged buyout this year. Rondelli knows Keevil from when the two worked together at Salomon Smith Barney, a predecessor to Citigroup. Keevil said: "Our joint venture fills an important missing piece in Compass Advisers' European coverage, complementing the coverage we have in France, Germany, Switzerland, Benelux and the Nordic region."