Gordon Crosbie-Walsh has resigned from J.P. Morgan‘s equity syndicate desk in Hong Kong this week and, according to sources, he will be joining Jefferies once his three-month gardening leave is up.
At Jefferies he will head up the equity syndicate for Asia and will also take on a dual role as co-head of Asia equity capital markets (ECM) alongside Danny Wong, the sources say. This means he is getting a significantly bigger role, albeit at a smaller firm. His title will be managing director and he will continue to be based in Hong Kong.
At J.P. Morgan he was an executive director on the syndicate desk, where he worked under Eliot Fisk, the head of equity syndicate for Asia. He joined J.P. Morgan in February 2010 after spending a few years in Australia with Patersons Securities, a boutique brokerage and investment bank.
Before that, he worked in equity sales at various firms in Hong Kong.
Jefferies, which is headquartered in New York but refers to itself as a global investment banking firm, has been looking for a head of Asia equity syndicate for quite some time as it continues to build its ECM business in the region and Crosbie-Walsh’s buy-side contacts and relationships will be a valuable addition to the firm.
In November last year it beefed up its Asia team quite substantially with five new investment banking hires, including Sherry Liu who was brought on board as chairman of Asia as well as vice-chairman of global investment banking. Liu had left Royal Bank of Scotland, where she was chairman and CEO for China, three months earlier after just 16 months with the bank.
Before that, she had spent seven years at J.P. Morgan as vice-chairman for China and chairman of China financial institutions. Her move to Jefferies attracted a lot of attention in the industry and showed both the firm’s commitment to the region and its ability to attract high-profile hires.
Danny Wong joined as head of ECM at the same time. He was previously with Macquarie where he was head of ECM for Greater China.
Like Wong, Crosbie-Walsh will likely be reporting to Liu in Asia, as well as to the firm’s global co-heads of ECM, Mark Connelly and Jesse Mark, who are both based in the US.
In addition to its hires, Jefferies has been teaming up with local securities firms in Asia in recent months as a way to expand its research offerings to institutional clients, both in Asia and globally. Under these agreements, the local firms will be providing research on companies in their respective countries, which Jefferies will be distributing on a co-branded basis to its clients. The local firms will also provide equity broking services to Jefferies’ clients.
So far, alliances have been entered into with Asia Plus in Thailand, Indopremier in Indonesia and KAF-Seagroatt & Campbell Securities in Malaysia.
At Patersons Securities, Crosbie-Walsh was reportedly focusing on corporate finance, but before that he was head of Hong Kong and China sales at Deutsche Bank. Before joining Deutsche in early 2002, he worked in equity sales at Salomon Smith Barney in Hong Kong.
His departure from J.P. Morgan leaves two people on its Asia equity syndicate desk: Fisk, who is one of the longest serving equity syndicate heads at a major investment bank in Asia, and Chang Liu, who has been on the desk for about two years.
