Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank has appointed Jean-Yves Korenian as head of acquisition finance and advisory in Asia as part of the reorganisation of its leveraged finance business, the French bank said in a memo on Tuesday.
Korenian will lead the newly-created division, formed by the combination of the bank’s acquisition and leveraged finance team and its advisory team. He will be responsible for structuring acquisition and leverage finance transactions while providing holistic capital structure and rating advisory services to the bank’s clients in Asia.
CACIB said the combination of the two teams was intended to create synergies to develop a stronger and more systematic solution offering in terms of corporate event-driven financing and/or capital structure advisory to its clients, while continuing to provide leveraged financing to private equity clients.
Korenian is a veteran leverage finance banker having worked at The Royal Bank of Scotland’s French levfin team between 1999 and 2004 before joining Mizuho, where he held various positions including head of leveraged finance for Southern Europe and head of corporate acquisition finance.
After leaving Mizuho late last year, Korenian had a brief stint at SEAFRIGO, a leading logistics and warehouse management company, where he served as chief financial officer for Asia Pacfic.
In his new role, Korenian will be based in Hong Kong and report to Christophe Cretot, head of Asia Pacific debt origination and advisory.
“Our clients are more and more interested in financing and advisory solutions on a product agnostic basis,” Cretot said in the memo.
“By adding our capital structure and rating advisory to the suite, the bank is now able to provide integrated financing and advisory services not only in the context of acquisitions but also on a steady-state basis while enhancing the strategic dialogue with its clients.”
Separately, CACIB has promoted Luyi Shen to head of funds coverage as the bank steps up efforts to provide services to investment funds.
Also based in Hong Kong, Shen’s primary role is to strengthen the bank’s commercial footprint with private equity funds, infrastructure funds, and investment arms of pensions funds, among others, the bank said in the memo.
He will report to Francois Martin, senior country officer for Hong Kong and head of Asia structured finance.
Shen joined CACIB in 2015 and was most recently an executive director with the bank’s Asia acquisition and leveraged finance division. Before joining CACIB, Shen spent eight years at Mizuho in Australia, where his last position was senior director of international acquisition finance.
