JM Financial forays into global M&A space with Foliage deal

MUMBAI: Veteran deal-maker Nimesh Kampani-controlled JM Financial recently concluded its first international M&A transaction as it prepares to transform itself into a global player in the investment banking business.

The 40-year-old firm, which was first catapulted into the limelight after successfully managing a public offer for Tata Motors in 1980 when domestic capital markets were still in their infancy, was adviser to Boston-based software product engineering services company Foliage, which was sold to French company Altran for approximately $100 million early this month. JM Financial Singapore, the company’s division based in the island-city, executed the deal.

“We want to build an Indian investment bank which is global. We have mandates from companies in Malaysia, China, South Africa and Switzerland. These are purely international mandates and nothing to do with India,” Vishal Kampani, MD and CEO, institutional securities, JM Financial, told ET . He is Nimesh Kampani’s son.


JM received a capital market licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore last month. The Singapore office was begun two years ago and a team led by Amitava Guharoy is looking to tap overseas opportunities.

The firm, which had an eight-year investment banking joint venture with Morgan Stanley that was severed in 2007, has applied for a licence to start an office in New York. “We have around 12 people in Singapore now. Once we kick off operations in the US, we will have 40% of our total employees in the investment banking division located abroad,” said Kampani. JM employs 65 people in the investment banking business.

The company’s global focus started two years ago as Nimesh Kampani stepped back from daily operations and son Vishal Kampani took over amid deal-making shifting from those that had a personal rapport with the participants to the big-time Wall Street players.

Nimesh Kampani, whose personal contacts with industrialists such as the Ambani brothers, Ratan Tata and Kumar Mangalam Birla, helped him seal many big deals, is executive chairman of the company. The elder Kampani has also set up a non-banking finance joint venture with former Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit, something that arose from the personal equation between the two.

JM’s global plans are linked to a crossborder strategy and anticipation that American promoters and private equity companies will increasingly look to buy out Asian companies in the technology and consumer sectors. “Look at the technology space. Many companies in the US and Japan may want to invest in companies in India and the Asean countries. This is a great opportunity for us,” said Vishal Kampani.

He believes that such cross-border opportunities will give rise to ideas that will lead to a new order of deal-making in M&A. The transaction came out of a similar learning. “The business is all about network and ideas,” said the younger Kampani.

Investment banking executive director Prakash Chellam, 37, had previously looked around for a product engineering service company that French major Altran could acquire. Though he could not clinch a deal at that time, when Foliage came on board he knew that that it could be a perfect fit for the French company.