She wants to buy water, but not to make a splash

If arch banker Robin Saunders has tired of the spotlight, a £900m bid for AWG won't help

For a woman regarded as one of the best networkers in the City – who can count Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone and retail entrepreneur Philip Green as good friends – Robin Saunders has a somewhat surprising worry on her mind.

Over the past few weeks the head of the German bank WestLB's principal finance division has become troubled by her own profile. Not lack of it, mind you. The 40-year-old banker, who is reputed to earn well in excess of £1m a year, is concerned that her name is getting too much exposure.

She hit the headlines again last week with a £900m tilt at the Anglian water company AWG. With Saunders threatening to go hostile, it doesn't look like her desire for a lower profile will be granted just yet.

But it's not just overexposure that's worrying Saunders. Despite having pulled off some of the country's most complicated deals, such as financing the new Wembley Stadium, the banker hasn't exactly been showered with compliments recently.

Saunders' critics say she's headline grabbing, that stories of her deal daring are deliberately leaked to the press to bolster her image. They point to her failed bids, to buy Railtrack and BT's fixed-line business. Her fiercest detractors have even gone as far as to suggest that she can be the kiss of death when it comes to completing deals.

But the American-born Saunders, who rarely gives interviews, hits back: "The last thing we want is headlines. Why would we want headlines when we are trying to buy companies? It seems to me that the people we are trying to buy from are putting the stories in the papers to get the price up. Sometimes our approaches are just preliminary, like the ones with BT and Railtrack, but they get blown so far out of proportion. Always, our number one objective is to drive value for the people we work for. It's not about attracting personal profiles."

Of course, there's another reason for the interest in Saunders, above the sometimes high-risk deals she has completed, including the rescue of Ecclestone's Formula One bond and the financing of Green's acquisition of Bhs. Because she's an attractive mother of two who is succeeding in the male-dominated City, she has been given the predictable "superwoman" tag.

Sometimes, however, the boundaries are stretched. She was recently described by a tabloid newspaper as a "hot-shot blonde financier" and she admits that this type of label "does bother me". Her employer takes a similar view. A spokesman for WestLB says: "From the bank's point of view we would regard things like hair colour as totally irrelevant. Not very interesting at all."

WestLB is, however, very interested in the money generated by Saunders and her 35-strong principal finance team, thought to be one of the bank's most profitable units. Saunders uses a formula pioneered by Guy Hands, the former head of principal finance at the Japanese bank Nomura, who has since set up his own fund with the backing of his old firm. The idea is to target asset-rich but undervalued businesses, often securitising the income through the debt market.

Saunders admits she is trying to follow in the footsteps of Hands: "He was the first to do it. He did it brilliantly well ... and I think very highly of him."

Last summer Saunders attempted to emulate Hands further with a proposal to give her team more independence from WestLB. The plan was far advanced and it is thought that she hoped to raise around £600m for the venture. But WestLB's board rejected the idea in October. Asked if she was disappointed, Saunders is adamant: "Definitely not. Definitely not." She explains that the bank has since "ringfenced some capital" for her division. When pressed, she admits the amount is "in the billions". Banking sources say the figure is more than £2bn, which explains why Saunders isn't so disappointed that her proposal was rejected.

A successful bid for AWG would eat into this fund significantly. "AWG has had a couple of difficult years and there are things to be done to make it more efficient and to rationalise it," she says. "To drive value out of the business requires a lot of elbow grease."

This would probably involve keeping the company's regulated water business and selling off its contracting and construction interests.

Gordon Morrison, who with his brother, Sir Fraser, sold his family firm Morrison Construction to AWG in September 2000, is backing Saunders' bid. Earlier this month AWG brought a £130m legal suit against Sir Fraser, alleging misrepresentation and negligence in the run-up to the sale of the company.

Saunders admits she has yet to speak to AWG's chief executive, Chris Mellor, and says: "I don't want to get too much into the management team, except to say that we think there are some good people in senior positions and I would hope that [if the bid were successful] some would stay on as consultants for a while."

As well as targeting undervalued companies, Saunders backs people she regards as mavericks, such as Ecclestone and Green.

"They are contrarians and, I guess, somewhat controversial. But they are extremely good at what they do and it has made the transactions we did with them a lot of fun. It certainly made a lot of money for the bank and them."

WestLB is one of Green's backers in his bid for Safeway and helped finance his swoop on Bhs. This left Saunders with a 1 per cent stake in the chain, for which she received a £1.75m dividend last year.

Regarding Green, she says: "He never sleeps." And of Ecclestone, she says: "I am always happy to help Bernie."

Saunders also has praise for Robert Tchenguiz, the Iranian property trader who, with his brother, Vincent, co-owns Rotch, the private property group worth around £4bn. She says the commercial property sector, which is populated by many small, poorly run, quoted companies, "is an area we are looking at".

Both Ecclestone and Green were invited to Saunders' 40th birthday celebration in Florence last year, which is reputed to have cost £400,000. The Italian medieval-themed party was also held to mark her 10th wedding anniversary. Saunders' critics seized on the celebrations as another attempt by the banker to flaunt her power among the business elite. There were even suggestions that her bosses at WestLB were uncomfortable with such a lavish display.

Perhaps this explains Saunders' attempt to step out of the limelight. But with the prospect of a hostile bid for AWG, a £2bn war chest and deal-hungry friends like Green and Ecclestone, there's little chance of her succeeding.