John McNiven started in banking in Australia in the early 1980s with the leading merchant bank, AUC, in Melbourne, in which Morgan Guaranty (today called JPMorgan) had a big stake.
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He got a break within three months when Morgan Guaranty sent him to New York on its commercial banking management programme.
He was part of quite a class. McNiven recalls: “I shared a desk with Bill Winters [who later ran investment banking at JPMorgan and is now chief executive of Standard Chartered] and TJ Lim. At the end of the course I was asked to stay on in New York, and together with TJ Lim, I was assigned to the derivatives team.
“I remember sitting there trying to figure out what that meant.”
It meant the start of a period of great innovation.
