J.P. Morgan has promoted Sudhir Goel and Pranav Thakur, two of its senior Hong Kong-based fixed income bankers.
James Kenny and Tarun Mahrotri, who co-head fixed income for global emerging markets (Gem), have appointed Goel as head of fixed income sales and structuring for Asia ex-Japan. Simon Derrick, who heads investor sales, and Brad Follett, who heads structuring, will report to Goel.
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Sudhir Goel, J.P. Morgan
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The larger remit for Goel, who was earlier co-head of the structuring and solutions group, is a result of his erstwhile boss Mahesh Bulchandani deciding to take up a new role. A source close to the situation said that Bulchandani might stay on in J.P. Morgan in a different capacity or could decide to do something entrepreneurial.
Bulchandani joined J.P. Morgan in 2001 in Tokyo to head its structured credit products business from Merrill Lynch. He has already relinquished his earlier role but will in any case be with the US bank until the end of this year.
Goel joined J.P. Morgan in August 2006 from HSBC, where he was then a director in cross-product structuring. He has also worked with Citi in its treasury division. Goel is well-positioned to drive J.P. Morgan in Asia to grow its flow business franchise, along with the corporate banking roll-out, said a source close to the situation.
Meanwhile, Pranav Thakur, who was head of trading for North Asia (Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong) and India has been given the additional charge of the rest of Asia. Earlier, Jit-Uma Thanyodom, who heads fixed income trading for Southeast Asia, and Thakur used to have parallel roles, reporting into Mahrotri and Kenny. Now Thanyodom will report to Thakur.
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Pranav Thakur, J.P. Morgan
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The promotion for Thakur brings the structure in Asia in line with that in the other markets that comprise Gem for J.P. Morgan, namely Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Ceemea). In both those regions there is a single trading head.
“This places the ultimate responsibility for managing the fixed income trading risk in Asia with one person, which is more efficient,” said a source. The source added that Mahrotri is spending more time outside Asia since his promotion to co-head of Gem last year and the de-layering is also a response to this.
Thakur joined J.P. Morgan in May 2007 from Barclays Capital, where he ran Southeast Asia trading from 2005. He cut his teeth at HSBC, working for almost a decade in the fixed income department.
“The promotions are in line with J.P. Morgan’s continuing endeavour to provide career-growth opportunities to talented individuals within the firm,” said a source close to the development.
Revenues have fallen at most investment banks this year on the back of significantly lower trading activity and dislocations in capital markets. J.P. Morgan’s second-quarter results managed to buck this trend, largely because of higher underwriting fees.
However, at a recent investor conference in the US, Jes Staley, who is chief executive officer of the investment bank for J.P. Morgan, flagged that in the third quarter sales and trading revenues could be down as much as 30% quarter-on-quarter on the back of volatility in financial markets, largely due to the eurozone debt crisis, the downgrade of the US long-term debt rating and persistent unemployment in the US. However, a source said that emerging-markets revenues had not been hit as badly as those in developed markets, and are still reasonably on track for forecasts. J.P. Morgan will be declaring results for the third quarter on October 13.
