Achintya Mangla, the co-head of equity capital markets for Asia ex-Japan at J.P. Morgan, has been appointed co-head of ECM for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea), according to sources who were citing an internal announcement.
He is taking over from Ina De, who has taken on a new role in banking. The other co-head is Klaus Hessberger who has been heading up J.P. Morgan’s ECM franchise in Emea for the past five years.
Mangla and Hessberger will both report to Liz Myers, the New York-based global head of ECM, as well as to Vis Raghavan, who is head of banking in Europe. Mangla will re-locate from Hong Kong to London later this year to take up his new role, one source said.
There has been no announcement so far with regard to a potential new co-head of ECM for Asia ex-Japan. And given the slow-down in IPO activity in the region in the first six months this year, it is possible that the firm may decide not to replace Mangla.
In addition to David Suen, who is the other co-head of ECM for Asia ex-Japan, J.P. Morgan does also have a head of ECM for Asia-Pacific, namely Jeff Zajkowski, who transferred from New York early last year. Aside from the fact that Zajkowski is also responsible for Japan and Australia, there is clearly a lot of overlap between his role and what Mangla and Suen do.
The move to Europe is a big step up for Mangla who has spent his entire career so far working in Hong Kong. He has been with J.P. Morgan since 2002, but for most of that time he was head of the firm’s equity-linked team and he is still known mostly as a convertible bond-specialist.
He was appointed co-head of ECM for Asia ex-Japan in May 2010, seemingly in an attempt to lure him back after he left the firm and had already signed a contract with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The internal announcement, which was signed by Liz Myers, noted that under Mangla’s leadership, J.P. Morgan has established itself in the equity-linked business and gained further market share in equity. It went on to say that he has helped win many marquee deals, build strong client relationships and significantly expand the bank’s ECM footprint across the region.
According to Dealogic, J.P. Morgan ranks third in the ECM league tables for Asia ex-Japan year-to-date after Goldman Sachs and UBS, which is up from fifth place in 2012, ninth in 2011 and fifth in both 2010 and 2009.
The improvement has been driven partly by two sizeable placements in Global Logistic Properties and Fubon Financial, which J.P. Morgan led on a sole basis. Both deals attracted a lot of attention as J.P. Morgan was forced to put its balance sheet to work to make up for a short-fall in demand by the time the order books closed. However, sources at the bank have said that both of these were calculated trades and with regard to GLP at least, it was able to trade out of its position quite nicely.
J.P. Morgan is currently ranked ninth for IPOs in the region with a 3.3% market share. In 2012 as a whole, it was sixth with a market share of 3.6%, while in 2011 it didn't make the top-10.
One of the sources said Mangla’s move to Europe is in line with a key theme within J.P. Morgan to build “global leaders” with experience and relationships across several regions. At the same time, it is a sign of the increasing maturity and sophistication of the Asian markets that more bankers from this region are being given senior roles in Europe and the US. Five years ago the flow of senior bankers was almost entirely going in the other direction.
Notably, the equity capital markets business in Emea has also been recovering strongly this year with total ECM volumes up 74% to $107.4 billion in the first half from the same period a year earlier. The IPO volume more than doubled to $14.7 billion, Dealogic data show.
This compares to Asia ex-Japan where the total ECM volume increased by a mere 5% to $81.2 billion and the IPO volume reached just $12.6 billion — the lowest first-half IPO volume in the region since 2009.
Mangla moved to Hong Kong in 2000 after finishing a master of business degree in India and joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the ECM team. He moved to J.P. Morgan in 2002 and became head of equity-linked in late 2003.
