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Monthly report from Ashmore Investment Management

Merrill Lynch has hired four managing directors and a team of staffers from JPMorgan.

Hybrid capital is cost efficient for issuers and offers yield-hungry investors significant advantages over many more traditional instruments. Now it is extending beyond its primary use in the financial sector and attracting an increasing number of European corporate issuers. As innovative solutions from intermediaries deliver a diverse institutional and retail investor base, there has never been a better time to consider hybrid capital.

The ABS market's remarkable bull run in the last two years has repositioned it much closer to the spreads of the best triple-A credits — but in March, spreads were knocked back when corporate bonds tanked. Neil Day asks whether the impressive tightening of recent years is over, or whether the best is yet to come.

GE Commercial Finance brought Adam Hewson on board from UBS in December 2004 to build its capital markets group as part of its plan to replicate its US business model in Europe. Hewson leads a team that supports the commercial finance businesses of GE Commercial Finance in Europe, which includes leveraged finance, telecom finance, energy, healthcare and SME lending.

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Adam Welham has been with UBS for 10 years, most recently as head of equity syndicate, a job he took on in May last year after Louise Wilson (qv) was promoted to become the bank's head of European equity capital markets (ECM). His history on the syndicate desk is a long one, having been a member since before the merger of UBS and SBC in 1998. In 2000, he spent a year away in Australia — a period that neatly coincided with the Sydney Olympics — before returning to work in London with Nick Hanbury-Williams on UBS's block trade team, a team that works closely with the syndicate desk.

If 2004 and 2005 are anything to go by, the key to a strong European equity capital markets franchise is contacts with financial institutions, which accounted for about 20% of European equity issuance last year, and just under 40% so far this one. For HSBC, which is determined to break into European equity capital markets and hopes to replicate its success in fixed income, hiring the right person for this market was vital, and in Alex Caramella, Danny Palmer (qv), global head of equity capital markets, found his man.

In losing Andrew Cooper, formerly its head of equity capital markets and derivatives, JP Morgan has lost a dedicated and successful investment banker. It was at JP Morgan where he conceived and executed what was almost certainly Asia Pacific's most profitable equity-linked trade ever, the jumbo private convertible preference share for Mitsubishi Motors in July 2004, which produced an estimated fee in excess of $100m and tens of millions of trading profits on top of that. But Merrill Lynch is enjoying the benefits of his move — he is now managing director, head of Pacific Rim equity-linked capital markets. Merrill has secured a thoughtful, eloquent and highly intelligent banker, trained as a chartered accountant and grounded over the past 15 years in equity capital markets with a specialisation in equity derivatives and more lately equity-linked products.

Alan Turner was put in charge of Barclays Capital's Asian leveraged and acquisition finance business in January 2005. He was previously a director in Asian loan origination for Barclays. Turner's appointment to this new position marked Barclays' confidence in the development of Asian economies and — in particular — the bank's belief that private equity will play a greater part in Asian mergers and acquisitions. Barclays will also be hoping it can replicate its success in European leveraged finance in Asia.

Andreas Bernstorff's return to Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in 2003 was something of a homecoming, having left Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (DKB) in 1997 for UBS. His return was followed quickly by a promotion — in July 2004, after the departure of Achim Schaecker, he was made a managing director and co-head of the bank's German ECM business alongside Johannes Koehler. Critical to Bernstorff's decision to return was DrKW's hire of John St John as global head of ECM in 2003, St John having been head of ECM at DKB when he worked there.

HSBC hired Andrew Dell last summer to spearhead its emerging market bond development in eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) and Latin America as part of HSBC's wider expansion as an investment bank. Within six months of his hire, Dell was given additional responsibilities for EEMEA and Latin American DCM, across both bonds and syndicated loans, earning him the new title of head of emerging market debt finance. At the same time, he heads up the bank's high yield syndicate efforts, reporting for all product areas to Mark Bucknall, global co-head of investment banking (qv).