BS People: Kartik Mehta & Sriram Iyer

Filling the gap at the top

At the time when a lot of investment banks are scaling down and the industry is seeing a lot of churn, the Indian arm of Japanese financial services firm Daiwa has made two important appointments from within the company. Last month, Daiwa Capital Markets India promoted Sriram Iyer as head of equities and Kartik Mehta as head of research.

Iyer, who was previously head of sales trading, has taken charge of Daiwa Capital's equities business at a time when the company has seen senior level exits.

In January, Alok Vajpeyi, the managing director and senior head of equities, quit in just eight months after joining. Before that in August 2011, Jaideep Goswami, who was the head of equities of the firm, quit to join ICICI Securities.

Iyer has over 16 years of sales and dealing room experience. Before joining Daiwa, he was with Antique Stock Broking and has also spent about a decade with Kotak Securities, as the head of sales trading and dealing.

Meanwhile, Kartik Mehta, before being promoted as head of research, was working as an Asia equity analyst with Daiwa since 2008. Previously, he has worked as an analyst at MF Global India and Enam Securities.

In December, Daiwa reportedly had laid-off over a dozen executives from its from its domestic investment banking, research, trading and sales divisions. A lot of foreign investment banks in recent months, as a part of their global job cuts, have also started trimming their staff in India.

These two appointments will be important for Daiwa Capital Markets India as it aims to develop itself as a full-service investment bank.

Daiwa Capital Markets is the fully-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based Daiwa Securities Group, the second-largest brokerage in Japan, after Nomura. The parent firm has more than 16,000 employees worldwide and operates in the retail brokerage, investment banking and asset management space.