(This article has been corrected to reflect that Punshi had already left Jefferies when he was hired by J.P. Morgan and that he was not country head at the time he left the boutique investment bank.)
Sidharth Punshi has joined J.P. Morgan in Mumbai as a managing director in investment banking. Punshi, who started earlier this month, was most recently with boutique investment bank Jefferies India, which he left in July last year. He joined Jefferies in 2008 as country head for India, but has since changed roles and when he left he was reporting to Jefferies' head of India investment banking and capital markets, Probir Rao. Punshi has also worked at Goldman Sachs and Citi in London, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore.
At J.P. Morgan, Punshi will report to Rohit Chatterji who took over as head of investment banking for the US bank in India last year when Vedika Bhandarkar resigned. Bhandarkar, a J.P. Morgan veteran, was lured to Credit Suisse where she was offered the position of vice-chairman for India as well as head of the investment banking and global markets solutions group for the same country. Following Bhandarkar to the Swiss bank was Sandeep Pangal who was a managing director for investment banking at J.P. Morgan in India. Pangal had been with the US bank since 1999.
Punshi is not technically a replacement hire, said a source close to the development. Pangal was not replaced last year because Chatterji wanted to spend some time familiarising himself with the Indian market before he decided how he wanted to staff his team. Punshi was last based in India in 1998. He will cover multiple sectors, including telecom and healthcare and will also work across products.
J.P. Morgan has around 23 people in investment banking in India. Punshi will be the fourth managing director in the team.
“We had a strong year in investment banking in 2010, closing some notable deals, both in terms of deal size and revenues,” Chatterji told FinanceAsia while discussing the hire. “Some of the interesting deals we closed include the Essar Energy London listing and Novelis refinancing.”
Most investment banks are ramping up their presence in India to cash in on the wave of deal activity that is expected to gain further momentum. However, a constant complaint from most bankers is that Indian clients drive a very hard bargain on fees. The fees are then divided among multiple bookrunners, making the deals almost uneconomic for investment banks. However, Indian clients are more ready to open their wallets when they need certainty of capital, add sources, putting players with a strong balance sheet, like J.P. Morgan, at an advantage.
