Macquarie has poached Gaurav Gupta from Nomura to head Macquarie Capital Advisers in India, a position that effectively makes him head of investment banking for India.
Gupta will continue to be based in Mumbai and will report to Kalpana Desai. Desai joined Macquarie Capital Advisers in September last year as deputy head of Asia.
The position as head of India at Macquarie Capital Advisers opened up in December last year when it appointed Varun Bajpai as chief executive officer of SBI Macquarie Infrastructure Management, a joint venture between the State Bank of India and Macquarie Capital. Bajpai was then the head of Macquarie's corporate advisory team in India.
It is interesting that the bank has chosen to hire from outside for a key position like head of investment banking for India. But it is also a fact that Macquarie has transferred senior people from India to other offices and may not have had a suitable replacement in the local team.
Gupta was most recently head of telecommunications, media and financial services for India at Nomura. He is currently on gardening leave and is expected to join Macquarie on April 1.
He brings to his new job more than 12 years of investment banking and transaction advisory experience and has led both domestic and cross border transactions across multiple sectors including real estate, telecommunications and media. Gupta recently worked on Aircel's $1.8 billion divestment of its towers business to GTL. Nomura, along with Rothschild and Standard Chartered, ran a sell-side auction on behalf of Aircel.
Before joining Nomura, Gupta was at NM Rothschild between 2002 and 2007, focusing on the media, healthcare and consumer sectors, as well as financial sponsors.
In India, Macquarie has a presence across corporate finance and advisory, infrastructure funds management, cash equities sales and research, and private wealth management. It employs more than 100 people in its advisory and cash equities business based in Mumbai, with the headcount split roughly equal between the two businesses.
