This may be called Kalpana Morparia's coup in investment banking. JP Morgan Chase, now headed by ex-ICICI Banker Morparia, has hired six top bankers from Bank of America Merill Lynch India. They include Merrill Lynch's head of global markets, Kaku Nakhate, and five other team members Sachin Parekh, Avinash Gupta, Manish Prasad, Aditya Khansaheb and Manish Tawde.
Only a month back, Nakhate had been named the head of global markets at Merrill Lynch after its integration with BofA. As its head of global markets for India, Nakhate was responsible for equity sales, trading and fixed income. Previously, she was the managing director and co-head, institutional equities, at the erstwhile DSP Merrill Lynch.
Nakhate is a management graduate from NMIMS. She started her career with DSP Merrill Lynch in 1988 as a part of the research team and succeeded up to the current position in the organisation.
According to media reports, the senior officials at BofA Merrill Lynch tried to negotiate and convince the team to stay back, which were not successful. The team consists of members from equity sales, trading, structured products and the fixed income team.
About a month back, Hemendra Kothari had stepped down as the chairman of DSP Merrill Lynch and had also sold his 10% stake in the company to Bank of America. Kothari founded DSP Financial Consultants in 1975 which became DSP Merrill Lynch Ltd. in 1995 after a JV was formed between the two with Merrill Lynch, holding a small minority interest.
This is not the first time a team en masse has moved from one investment bank to the other. Last year 25 analysts including Praveen Chakravarty, the Director of Research at Thomas Wiesel International, moved to BNP Paribas Securities.