Aloke Gupte, head of Asia-Pacific equity-linked origination at JP Morgan, is relocating to London and will be replaced by Gaurav Maria, according to an internal memo seen by FinanceAsia on Monday.
The appointment of Gupte as head of EMEA equity-linked origination means he will be in charge of a much bigger market, where convertible and exchangeable bond issuance generally is triple or quadruple the volume seen in Asia over the past few years.
Year-to-date equity-linked issue in EMEA is even higher than North America, the world’s largest market for the asset class in recent years.
EMEA is also home to a large pool of long-term investors, commonly known as outrights in the equity-linked space.
During his tenure Gupte has transformed JP Morgan into a powerhouse in the equity-linked space. For the last decade in the Asia ex-Japan equity-linked league tables, the US bank has consistently been among the top-three banks.
According to Dealogic, JP Morgan ranks top in Asia ex-Japan equity-linked issue with five transactions totaling $952 million.
The bank was the lead-left bookrunner in both CRRC’s $600 million H-share convertible bond and another $500 million offering by China Railway Construction Corp earlier this year.
JP Morgan has also consistently initiated new structures for bond issuers in response to the ever-changing market conditions.
Earlier this year, JP Morgan solely advised on a $170 million convertible note offering by Indian drug research and manufacturing firm Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, which adopted a forward price setting structure not been seen for over a decade.
Maria, Gupte’s successor, is an experienced banker in the asset class and has been involved in the origination and execution of convertible and exchangeable bonds since joining JP Morgan’s equity-linked team in Hong Kong in 2010.
Before that he spent four years with the bank’s investment banking division in Singapore.
He holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India and an Electrical Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
