J.P. Morgan Securities has set up a principal investments management group and has hired Tamara Adler, former head of European corporate structured finance, to lead the effort in London. Dave Schabes, chairman at Banc One Capital Markets in Chicago, will head the team upon completion of the J.P. Morgan/Bank One merger on July 1, according to Sebastian Howell, spokesman for J.P. Morgan in London. Adler and Bill Winters, co-chief executive of J.P. Morgan and global head of credit and rates, referred calls to the firm's spokesman; Schabes did not return calls.
The principal investment management group is a start-up with a mandate to commit capital J.P. Morgan will deploy alongside its clients' investments, said Mike Golden, spokesman in London. Areas the new group will focus on include mezzanine funds, J.P. Morgan's own proprietary hedge funds and other banks' non-performing loans. It will not invest in equity to avoid competing with J.P. Morgan Partners, the firm's private equity business.
The firm has historically invested with its clients through separate efforts, such as the principal finance group within debt capital markets. The principal investment management group is being created to pull together these efforts, Golden stated.
Adler returns to J.P. Morgan a little more than a year after it closed its European corporate structured finance division last May (BW, 5/12/03). Since then, she has served on the boards of financial and non-profits in the U.S. and the U.K. Adler is seen as instrumental in the growth of the European securitization markets in the late 1990s, when she headed Deutsche Bank's European securitization group. While at Deutsche Bank in London, she was also chairman of the European Securitisation Forum for two years. During Adler's two years with J.P. Morgan, the corporate team completed several innovative hybrid whole business securitizations, including a £43 million deal for ferry operator Red Funnel and a £210 million issue for funeral services provider Dignity Caring.
