New York: Financial giant J P Morgan Chase has promoted India-born executive Anu Aiyengar as co-head of mergers and acquisitions for North America, making her one of the most senior women running a mergers group at a big bank on Wall Street. Aiyengar, 42, along with Henry Gosebruch, a German citizen who specializes in health care and biotech deals, will assume the newly created roles of co-heads of mergers and acquisitions at the financial giant. "In this time of unprecedented M&A activity, we are making changes to our organisation structure to better align our regional M&A resources in support of our client agenda," J P Morgan's co-heads of global M&A, Hernan Cristerna and Chris Ventresca, said in an internal memo quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Aiyengar is a rising star at J P Morgan who was told at an interview at a major Wall Street firm 15 years ago that she could not be hired because she was "the wrong gender, wrong color and wrong country." She had joined J P Morgan as an associate in 1999 and moved up to become a senior banker covering the financial institutions, consumer and retail sectors. During her years at JPMorgan, she has worked on around USD 200 billion worth of transactions. A report in the New York Times said Aiyengar has worked on several of JPMorgan's biggest assignments in recent years, focusing on consumer, retail and financial institution deals.
Her high-profile multibillion-dollar mandates last year included food chain Burger King Worldwide's acquisition of Canadian multinational fast casual restaurant Tim Hortons, the clothing group Men's Wearhouse acquisition of men's retailer Jos A Bank and office supplies company OfficeMax's merger with Office Depot. The NYT report quoted from a profile of Aiyengar in which she said that she is "very passionate about having more women in broader financial services, and especially banking, not just M&A." In the profile, Aiyengar had said that being a woman has proven to be an advantage in connecting with clients with many becoming friends and mentors.
