Anu Aiyengar to Serve as JPMorgan's lone Global M&A Executive

By: WE Staff | Friday, 13 January 2023

Anu Aiyengar is the only female executive, heading global M&A on Wall Street after JPMorgan Chase & Co. designated her as the standalone leader of its international mergers and acquisitions (M&A) business on Thursday followed by the resignation of co-head Dirk Albersmeier.

James Casey and Viswas Raghavan, the two international co-heads of financial services at JPMorgan, made the proclamations in an internal memo. A JPMorgan spokesperson confirmed the memo's contents. According to the memo, Albersmeier will join JPMorgan under a brand-new title that is "wholly client and transaction-focused."

According to the message, "coming forward, Anu will serve as the exclusive leader of our strengthened Global company and Dirk will singularly concentrate on offering our customers with first-rate M&A guidance and helping to edify the next group of M&A leaders."

According to Dealogic data, JPMorgan ranked 2nd on the financial league table rankings in 2013 after advising on transactions totaling more than $900 billion. The rankings for 2022 were headed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), which had provided advice on transactions totaling more than $1.2 trillion.

The M&A leadership transition at JPMorgan comes at a time when deal-making is significantly slowing down, forcing Wall Street's leading investment banks to make a significant number of layoffs—the largest reduction in staff ever since the financial crisis.

Anu is one among an elite group of female Wall Street executives who run a global M&A advising company. Other notable female leaders include Barbara Becker, chair and board member at legal firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Melissa Sawyer, worldwide head of the M&A practice at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and Faiza Saeed, governing attorney at law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.

Anu, a JPMorgan veteran of further than 20 years, has been in charge of the bank's M&A franchise since she and Albersmeier were endorsed to the position in 2020. During her tenure, she has propounded instruction on several significant transactions, notably Burger King's acquisition of Tim Horton Inc.

Recent remarkable transactions that Anu oversaw and JPMorgan provided advice on include the $6.4 billion price lessening of geostationary operator Maxar Technologies (MAXR.N) to the private equity company Advent International and the $2.65 billion acquisition of Valvoline Inc.'s global products business by Saudi Aramco (VVV.N).