By Amy-Jo Crowley
LONDON (Reuters) – Bank of America has made a handful of senior appointments within its investment banking team advising European technology, media and telecom (TMT) companies, an internal memo seen by Reuters showed.
The memo, which was confirmed by a Bank of America spokesperson, said the U.S. bank has named veterans Alexandre Gafsi and Emmanuel Hibou as chairs of TMT Investment Banking in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to “focus fully on covering some of our key clients”.
It has also appointed Thomas Koehrer and James Robertson as co-heads of TMT Investment Banking for the EMEA region.
Peter Luck, who has been co-head of UK Investment Banking with Robertson, is now taking over full UK responsibilities.
The changes follow a drop in merger and acquisitions (M&A) and capital markets activity last year as a result of economic uncertainty and high borrowing costs due to interest rate hikes.
But although investor enthusiasm cooled towards technology companies, TMT overall remained one of the most active sectors for M&A in 2022, accounting for roughly a quarter of global deal value, according to research by consultancy PwC.
(Reporting by Amy-Jo Crowley; Additional reporting by Pablo Mayo Cerqueiro; Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Alexander Smith)