Daiwa Capital Markets adds senior investment bankers

Daiwa Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of Japanese brokerage and financial services company Daiwa Securities Group, has hired three senior bankers for its investment banking team in Asia.

According to a release, Mathew Welch, formerly with ING, has joined the financial institutions group (FIG) as head of banks; Marco Arosti has moved across from Morgan Stanley to become head of general industries; and Gerard Gu has joined from Deutsche Bank as head of consumer retail. All three have the title of managing director, will focus on Asia-Pacific ex-Japan and started with Daiwa at the beginning of this month.

The appointments were announced in the same week as Daiwa said it had hired six new analysts for its equity research division in the region, including Mingchun Sun who joined from Nomura to take up the dual position as head of China research and chief Greater China economist. They also follow several other recent hires for Daiwa’s investment banking division, including three people for the FIG team.

In November last year, Daiwa Securities outlined an expansion plan for Asia and said it intended to invest ¥100 billion ($1.15 billion at then exchange rates) to increase its headcount in the region to more than 1,100 by 2011. By July this year, it had added more than 100 bankers, bringing the total headcount in Asia to approximately 850, and Shigeharu Suzuki, president and CEO of Daiwa Securities, said the firm expects Asia-related revenue for fiscal 2011 to account for approximately 30% of the group revenue, a significant increase from the current level of 10%.

These three latest additions “will greatly strengthen the breadth and depth of our investment banking offering across the key industrial sectors where we expect to see a tremendous rise in corporate finance activities over the next few years”, Sumio Otsuka, executive officer and Daiwa’s co-head of global investment banking, said in a written comment.

Welch will be based in Singapore and will report to Thomas Jackamo, who is head of FIG for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan and did himself join the firm at the beginning of September from Royal Bank of Scotland. Welch has worked in Asia for more than 20 years, primarily focusing on financial clients. At ING he was also head of financial institutions and before that, in 2007 and 2008, he worked in the FIG group at Singapore investment company Temasek. He has also worked with Standard Chartered, where he was instrumental in building the bank’s FIG business, and with Merrill Lynch, management consulting firm McKinsey and other global financial institutions.

Arosti has spent six years with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong and London, most recently as an executive director in the industrials group in Asia-Pacific. According to the Daiwa release, he was instrumental in leading the US bank’s industrials franchise to the number one position in M&A and equity for China and South Korea in 2009. He started his banking career with J.P. Morgan in London. At Daiwa, he will be based in Hong Kong.

Gu was most recently a director in Deutsche’s consumer retail corporate finance team in Asia, focusing primarily on Greater China and prominent multinational clients. Prior to that, he was an M&A banker with J.P. Morgan in New York and ABN AMRO in Hong Kong. He too will be based in Hong Kong.

Arosti and Gu will both report to Kazuyoshi Mizukoshi, head of investment banking for Asia-Pacific. In a written statement, Mizukoshi noted that the experience and relationships of the three new hires will allow the Japanese firm “to enhance [its] capabilities in line with [its] ambitions to become one of the top 10 investment banks in Asia ex-Japan over several years”.

Aside from Welch and Jackamo, other recent hires for the FIG team in the region include Michael Perry as head of execution and Jeff Walker as head of insurance. At the end of September, Daiwa also brought on board Jonathan Orders from boutique corporate finance advisory firm Asia Pacific Advisers as head of equity capital markets for Asia ex-Japan.