Morgan Stanley has shuffled roles in its Asia investment banking department in an effort to reward key rainmakers, according to memos seen by FinanceAsia on Tuesday.
Dieter Turowski will become chairman of investment banking Asia Pacific outside of Japan. Turowski had been co-head of investment banking Asia Pacific since 2013, with Shane Zhang.
The moves comes as the US firm looks to bolster its position in M&A and equity financing across the region, as well as orient its fixed income capital markets business more towards high yield bonds, leveraged finance and private deals.
In his new role, Turowski will focus his efforts on the investment banking department’s relationships with key clients who have global ambitions, including financial sponsors. With experience working in the US, Europe and Asia, he will focus on facilitating cross-border M&A.
Moving into Turowski’s seat will be George Taylor. Taylor joined Morgan Stanley in 2001. He has led the firm’s Asia Pacific global capital markets (GCM) division, a nexus between investment banking and sales & trading, since 2010.
He has been in Asia for his entire 16-year career with the firm. It was time to reward him with a broader role, people familiar with the changes said.
Taylor was instrumental in the restructuring of WH Group’s IPO from a syndicate of 29 managers down to Morgan Stanley and BOC International, and AIA’s well-executed IPO.
Client responsibilities are still to be ironed out in detail, but Zhang will likely have more of an emphasis on China and M&A and naturally Taylor will tend towards overseeing capital markets deals.
Historically Zhang has worked on more transactions in the financials sector while Taylor has built his experience in the commodities, resources and gaming sectors.
In turn, Taylor has relinquished his position as head of global capital markets, Asia Pacific, to Julien Begasse de Dhaem. In some ways this was a very natural step as Begasse acted often as Taylor’s deputy in GCM.
Begasse joined the firm in 2000 and has led its Asia Pacific fixed income capital markets business since 2009. Alongside his new appointment, Begasse will join the Asia-Pacific executive committee.
In May, Morgan Stanley was the only non-Chinese company involved in ChemChina’s refinancing of its loans for the acquisition of Syngenta. It arranged $2 billion in convertible preferred shares. Morgan Stanley also worked on several private placements for ChemChina.
In April, Crawford Jamieson became a vice-chairman of global capital markets, focusing on clients and deals, after sharing GCM duties in Asia-Pacific with Taylor. At that time, Taylor became the sole head of global capital markets in Asia Pacific.