India-born Anu Aiyengar to co-head JPMorgan’s M&A division for North America

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.