Lakhanpal has joined from Credit Suisse where he used to run corporate finance execution for Asia ex-China. At JPMorgan he will now head corporate finance execution across products (equity, debt and M&A) in India. Lakhanpal has worked in investment banking for 14 years with Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs based in Hong Kong, New York and Singapore. He moves from Hong Kong to Mumbai to take up his new job and will report to Vedika Bhandarkar, head of the investment bank in India.
The US bank has moved Cyrus Mehta from London to Mumbai to build up the high-yield and leveraged finance business in India. Mehta, who has been with JPMorgan for more than 15 years, will be an executive director in the Mumbai office. Mehta has a reporting line to Tim Donahue, head of Asia-Pacific leveraged finance at JPMorgan.
To beef up its equity capital markets team, JPMorgan brings on board Mehul Savla, also as executive director. Savla joins from ICICI Securities where he has nine years of experience in the equities capital markets group. Savla has also worked with IndiaÆs capital markets regulator, SEBI. Mehul has a reporting line to Arjun Khullar, head of South Asia ECM in Singapore, part of Kester NgÆs team.
ôIndia is a very important market for JPMorgan," says Kester Ng, head of Asia equity capital and derivatives markets. ôWe are building up our platform aggressively as evidenced by a number of new hires and internal moves we have already announced in the equities sales, trading and research business. We are delighted to further strengthen our local platform.ö
Like other investment banks operating in India, JPMorgan has also seen some resignations in the recent past. Samita Shah, who was with the firm for around a decade, left for Lehman Brothers where she will be part of a team setting up a principal investing desk.
As per Dealogic league tables for the most recent 12-month period ended May 31, JPMorgan ranks fourth among all bookrunners for international equity and equity-linked offerings. For the same period, as per local database Prime, JPMorgan ranks twelfth for domestic issues. The firm has had a reasonable run with M&A and ranks fourth among advisors on completed deals according to Dealogic. It is obviously banking on its new hires to give it the push it needs to move up the charts.
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