Something has been building at JPMorgan. For years, a common question in the industry has been: why isn’t the bank, for all its global strength, doing better in Asia? It has always been close to the top in Asian investment banking but rarely troubles Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley at the very highest table.
There is momentum, though, and this is clearest in advisory, where JPMorgan prises this award from Morgan Stanley. The sheer weight of its deal count – and its position at the top of the Dealogic revenue tables for ex-Japan Asia M&A fees – demands attention, and a closer look reveals a franchise of considerable breadth.
Highlights in our review period include advising Baring Private Equity Asia on the sale of Hexaware Technologies to Carlyle; advising BHP on the merger of its oil and gas portfolio with Woodside; Emart on its purchase of eBay Korea; and PCCW on the sale of its data centre business to DigitalBridge group.
That handful of deals covers India, Australia, Korea and Hong Kong, but you could go anywhere in the last year and find JPMorgan.
Take Singapore. Not only did it advise on the pivotal Grab/Altimeter $39.6 billion deSpac merger, but it was the adviser to Partners Group on the sale of its majority stake in Straive to Baring, and advised CapitaLand on its strategic restructuring to create a leading global real estate investment manager.
Or take Indonesia, where JPMorgan advised Southern Capital Group and Carlyle on the sale of their stake in Solusi Tunas Pratama, and advised Ooredoo on the merger between Indosat and Hutch Australia, and then Indosat on the sale of its telecommunication tower to Edge Point.
What you’re seeing now is the result of a multi-year build by Kerwin Clayton and Rohit Chatterji, co-heads of M&A for Asia Pacific, who took on responsibility for the practice in 2017. They have positioned the business in the right trends, from tech to infrastructure, financial sponsors, Japanese conglomerate divestments, rising India, restructuring Korea and domestic China.
“Our objective was to systematically elevate a practice which was not where we wanted it to be,” says Chatterji. “We have taken it to a place where we are on the most transformational deals for the most ambitious clients around the region, supported by the most senior and best bankers in M&A positioned in the right locations.”