Jefferies taps Barclays's Ashish Jhaveri to help build India M&A team

By Anto Antony

Ashish Jhaveri, head of mergers and acquisitions for Barclays Plc in India, has resigned from the company and is set to join Jefferies Financial Group Inc. to help build its deal advisory business in the country, according to people familiar with the matter.

A veteran of two decades in investment banking, during which he worked across companies including Citigroup Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG, Jhaveri has agreed to join Jefferies in Mumbai, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.

The hire is part of the US firm’s ambition to build an M&A practice in India, where dealmaking has been relatively robust while the business elsewhere slowed to a crawl. Barclays was an adviser on billionaire Gautam Adani’s acquisition of Holcim Ltd.’s India operations and JSW Energy Ltd.’s buyouts of renewable energy businesses among others in the last 12 months, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Spokespersons for Barclays and Jefferies declined to comment on Jhaveri’s move, while he didn’t respond to text messages and phone calls seeking comment. Jhaveri, a chartered accountant, has been heading Barclays’s M&A unit in India since 2018, according to his Linkedin profile.