Leading Indian investment bank Avendus Capital is ramping up its European operations with new hires in the geography. The Mumbai-headquartered firm has hired Robert Davis from Nomura International to head its European operations, while it has also appointed Dr. Hanif Lalani from BT Global Services as a Senior Advisor.
Davis will be taking over from Aashish Bhinde, who will be returning to India to assume a new role with the organisation, Avendus said in a statement.
Davis, who was heading European M&A at Nomura, has over 20 years of advisory experience across deal types, sectors & geographies, the firm said in a statement. He has previously worked for JP Morgan and Robert/Jardine Fleming. Davis qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Joining Davis will be Dr Hanif Lalani who will work as a Senior Advisor based out of London and will support Avendus in facilitating cross border M&A between Europe and India. Lalani, who has held senior positions at BT plc including a board member as Group Finance Director, last served as Chief Executive of BT Global Services.
The investment bank seems to slowly building a global franchise with India as headquarters. “Due to the strong appetite of Indian companies for global acquisitions and growing importance of India as a preferred destination for global corporations, cross-border transactions are becoming a large part of our business mix in financial advisory services. With this in mind, we set up two international offices – US & UK – in 2008 to further enhance our cross-border capabilities. The appointment of Robert and Hanif is to help us achieve our long-term vision of becoming the go-to advisor for India-related cross border investment banking," Ranu Vohra, CEO and Managing Director, Avendus Capital, said.
Last year, Avendus helped buy and sell six companies in Europe in both inbound and outbound deals, including the sale of payment processing company Venture Infotek to French-headquartered Atos Origin SA.
These developments come in the wake of an increased activity in the cross-border deals. M&A deals including both inbound and outbound have increased from $22.72 billion in 2006 to $44.77 billion in 2010 according to data from VCCedge, the financial research platform of VCCircle.