By Milana Vinn
NEW YORK, April 22 (Reuters) - JPMorgan has hired two veteran technology bankers from Bank of America as it continues to expand its tech investment banking group, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
The bank has added a top semiconductor investment banker Kaushik Banerjee and a veteran internet investment banker, Homan Milani, according to the memo by the bank's Global Co-Heads of Technology Investment Banking Greg Mendelson and Chris Grose.
Banerjee, the global head of semiconductor
investment banking and electronics at BofA, will join as a managing director and continue to focus on supporting semiconductor and electronics clients.
Milani, who was BofA's head of Americas internet investment banking, will join JPMorgan as a managing director and co-head of its AI effort.
BofA declined to comment.
Banerjee, who spent four years at BofA, has emerged as one of the rainmakers after advising on nearly a dozen marquee transactions in the semiconductor sector, including:
• ASML's $1.4 billion investment in Mistral AI
• IonQ's $1.8 billion acquisition of Skywater
• the $8.2 billion sale of National Instruments to Emerson
• the $1.45 billion sale of EA Elektro-Automatik to Fortive
• the $339 million sale of Transphorm to Renesas
• the $600 million sale of AMI to THL Partners
• Bain's acquisition of Somacis for an undisclosed amount
While at Bank of America, he also advised on the restructuring of Renesas’ $2.1 billion investment in Wolfspeed, Intel’s approximately $400 million minority sale of IMS and the $1 billion minority investment in Coherent’s silicon carbide semiconductor business.
As a leading internet banker at Bank of America, Milani had worked on M&A advisory and financing deals for DoorDash, Unity Software, Lyft Inc, Zillow Group, RealReal Inc, Match Group, Grindr, Pinterest Inc, Affirm Holdings, SoFi Technologies, Opendoor Technologies, and Snap Inc, among others.
In the memo, Mendelson and Grose also said that Riaz Ladhabhoy, a managing director in the technology group, has been appointed as a vice chair focused on supporting its global semiconductors practice.
JPMorgan has doubled down on growing its technology investment banking and M&A groups in recent years, emerging at the top of the league tables for fees from U.S. and global tech deals signed in the first quarter, according to data compiled by Dealogic.
JPMorgan hired about a dozen senior tech bankers last year.
(Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York; Editing by Dawn Kopecki, Jamie Freed and Chizu Nomiyama )
