Goldman Sachs beefs up Asia M&A team

Hong Kong

Goldman Sachs is beefing up its mergers team in Asia as deal volume in the region reaches record levels.

The US investment bank is creating a new position of vice-chairman of the investment banking division for Asia Pacific excluding Japan. The role is being taken on by Richard Campbell-Breeden, who also becomes chairman of its mergers and acquisitions group.

He has been running M&A in the region, ex-Japan, since 2011. According to an internal memo seen by the Financial Times, he will continue to provide strategic advice for many of bank’s most important clients.

John Kim, co-country head of Goldman Sachs Korea since 2007, will move from Seoul to Hong Kong to replace Mr Campbell-Breeden as head of M&A for Asia ex-Japan.

Mr Kim “will work closely together with Richard to lead this important franchise which is core to our investment banking business,” the memo said.

The bank is ranked number one in the region so far this year, working on deals worth $53.8 billion — almost as much as the $60 billion worth it worked on in all of last year, according to Dealogic, when it ranked third. Offers launched for targets in Asia have totalled more than $294 billion, more than half the volume in the whole of last year.

Deals Goldman has been involved with this year include OCBC’s $5 billion acquisition of Hong Kong’s Wing Hang Bank and advising Hutchison Whampoa on its $5.7 billion sale of a quarter-stake in its Watsons pharmacy chain to Singapore’s Temasek. It also worked on Lenovo’s $2.3 billion acquisition of IBM’s server business.

Christos Tomaras, head of the bank’s European private equity M&A practice, is relocating from London to join the Hong Kong team.

The moves are the latest in a series of shuffles in the industry for Asia as banks look carefully at their strategies. Barclays this week announced 100 investment banking job cuts as its global investment bank targets a one-quarter reduction in headcount over the next three years.

Last week, a reshuffle at UBS strengthened its operations in Australia — a country in which it is particularly dominant — as Matthew Grounds, its star dealmaker, relinquished his global roles to focus on his home market.

Mr Campbell-Breeden moved to Hong Kong in 2008 to co-head the bank’s M&A business in the region. Previously he was considered a star private equity banker in Europe, where bids he worked on included an audacious GBP11 billion approach in 2007 by a CVC-led consortium for J Sainsbury, the UK supermarket group.

— Financial Times