Singapore-headquartered mid-market focused Asian advisory firm Avista Advisory Group (Avista) has roped in Ravi Shankar as MD and head of investment banking coverage in India, the company said.
Shankar, who began his career with DSP Merrill Lynch (now Bank of America Merrill Lynch) in Mumbai, was working with UBS as an MD before joining Avista and worked on a range of domestic and cross-border corporate finance assignments. He was also instrumental in establishing UBS’ investment banking platform in India over the past decade, growing it from a three-member team to one among the top-three M&A advisory firms in India.
He holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata.
Shankar had quit UBS last September and the Swiss bank recently named Gaurav Mehta as new head of its investment banking unit in India. Mehta’s elevation is a part of the bank's restructuring exercise in India that started last year, through which it surrendered its banking licence and reduced staff in both investment banking and treasury wings.
In another top level movement in the Indian investment banking space, Sughosh Moharikar had quit his role as head of Deutsche Bank’s investment banking team to join Mumbai-based investment banking firm MAPE Advisory Group.
Meanwhile, Avista has also appointed Lily Qian as a MD and head of i-banking coverage for Southeast Asia. Lily will be based in Singapore and joins Avista from Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), Singapore where she spent seven years.
In her tenure at ANZ, she was most recently an executive director and head of corporate advisory, China. Before joining ANZ, she was a director in Deutsche Bank’s structured finance group in Singapore and has also held senior roles at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, J.P. Morgan Chase and China Construction Bank.
Lily holds a BA in Economics from Shanghai University of Finance & Economics and an MBA from the Nanyang Technology University in Singapore.
“With more than 20 years of investment banking experience across the Asia-Pacific region, and having worked on nearly every type of advisory mandate including M&A, corporate finance, and structured debt transactions, Lily is a fantastic addition to our team,” said Rajiv Kochhar, CEO of Avista.
“Similarly, Ravi has a proven track record of both successful transactions and the effective build-out of a top-three M&A franchise in India," he added.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
