Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, the i-banking subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank, has entered into an exclusive strategic alliance for cross-border M&A advisory services between India and Japan with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) and SMBC Nikko Securities (SMBC Nikko), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SMBC.
SMBC is the core financial institution of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), the second largest financial services group in terms of market capitalization in Japan. SMBC Nikko is a securities and investment banking firm in Japan. With a combined team of over 500 investment banking professionals in Japan, SMBC and SMBC Nikko have advised on 90 transactions with announced deal value of over $24 billion in 2012 year-to-date.
In 2010, Kotak and SMBC entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for business cooperation across various businesses of mutual interest. Since then, both groups have collaborated in and are working on a number of areas such as trade finance, treasury products, corporate customer referrals, asset management and alternate assets, said the company.
The cooperation is now being extended to investment banking for India-Japan flows and deals.
Simultaneously, Kotak Investment Banking and GCA Savvian Corporation have mutually concluded their exclusive strategic cooperation agreement for M&A Advisory Services between India and Japan.
TV Raghunath, MD & CEO, Kotak Investment Banking said, “Japan is a priority market for cross-border M&A with India, and the growing relationship and synergies between the two countries will only continue to get stronger."
The India-Japan corridor is one of the most important and active markets for cross-border M&A involving India. In 2012, Japanese firms ranks among the top 3 inbound acquirers and 3 of the 10 largest announced M&A transactions involving India took place in this corridor.
Six months back, Kotak had rejigged its top management, when it appointed TV Raghunath as its managing director and chief executive officer and S Ramesh, the chief operating officer of the investment bank, was promoted as its joint managing director.
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(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)