Macquarie Capital Advisers, the advisory and corporate finance arm of Macquarie Group, has hired Joseph Hsu as head of corporate finance execution for Greater China.
Hsu will be responsible for the execution of equity capital market transactions in the region, working closely with Macquarie Capital Advisers’ equity capital markets team, as well as with country coverage and sector bankers, the Australian bank said yesterday.
“As our deal flow in Greater China continues to increase, we are delighted to strengthen further our senior corporate finance team to ensure the highest quality of execution for our clients,” said Kalpana Desai, head of Macquarie Capital Advisers in Asia.
Hsu has more than 15 years of experience of corporate finance execution in Hong Kong and a number of strong client relationships which he will continue to develop. He joins Macquarie from Standard Chartered Bank where he focused on the execution of primary and secondary equity fundraising transactions, as well as mergers and acquisitions in numerous industry sectors in Greater China. Hsu previously worked at Cazenove, which was bought by Standard Chartered in early 2009. Prior to that, he was with HSBC and has also been the chief financial officer of a Hong Kong-listed company. He is a qualified UK chartered accountant.
Macquarie Capital Advisers has turned itself from a niche player into a full-fledged investment banking franchise in recent years. It has been a bookrunner on some of the largest IPOs in Hong Kong, including the world’s largest ever share sale by Agricultural Bank of China earlier this year, and the multi-billion dollar IPOs by China Minsheng Bank in 2009 and China Railway Construction in 2008.
Macquarie’s success in IPOs is partly due to the global distribution capabilities of the group's cash equities business -- the stock broking business previously owned by ING, now called Macquarie Securities Group (MSG). MSG has built a reputation as the world’s largest distributor of Asian equities. It researches more than 1,200 Asia-listed securities and claims to have more sales people around the world focused purely on selling Asia-listed securities than any of its competitors.
The firm recently lost a key banker who had helped accelerate Macquarie Capital's progress in the region. Andrew Low, chief operating officer of Macquarie Capital, announced in June that he would quit after 20 years with the firm.