Ravi Shankar, managing director of UBS AG’s investment banking unit in India, has resigned. He had joined the company in October 2004 and has spent close to nine years with the bank.
Some of the big ticket transactions for UBS during his tenure were Vodafone Group acquiring stake in Hutchison Essar Ltd for $11.1 billion, Hindalco Industries Ltd’s $6 billion acquisition of Novelis Inc, Reliance Industries Ltd acquiring stake in Eagle Ford Shale acreage position for $1.31 billion and Tech Mahindra’s $570-million acquisition of Satyam.
Prior to joining UBS, Shankar, a graduate of IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta, had worked with DSP Merrill Lynch for over four years.
According to media reports, his resignation is a likely pre-cursor to the bank exiting its investment banking business in India. UBS will lay off more people in Indian investment banking division, which employs about 20-25 people.
However, Mark Panday, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for UBS, told VCCircle that rumours suggesting that UBS is winding down its investment banking operations in India are baseless. “India remains a core investment banking market for UBS in Asia Pacific,” he said.
He did not comment on the headcount of the team but said Shankar was not the head of the unit as reported by several media publications earlier in the day.
The top level exit from UBS in India comes after the bank surrendered its commercial banking licence in June.
In 2011, the head of India operations at UBS, Manisha Girotra, had resigned and joined US boutique investment bank Moelis as its India head. (SEE: US boutique I-bank Moelis names former UBS banker Manisha Girotra as India head).
The bank named Aashish Kamat, its chairman of financial institutions coverage in Asia Pacific, as the new chief executive for India in the same period.
UBS' services in India include equity and equity-linked financing, M&A advisory and debt capital market offerings.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)