By David French
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Fenchurch Advisory Partners, a boutique investment bank focused on the financial services industry, is hiring Gautam Chawla as co-head of its operations in the United States, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Chawla will join the firm in November from Barclays, where he has been serving as global co-head of its financial institutions group, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the move, which has not been announced publicly.
At Fenchurch, an affiliate of French investment bank Natixis, Chawla will work alongside John Sipp, the current head of the bank’s U.S. operations, who joined Fenchurch when it opened its office in New York in 2022.
Fenchurch and Barclays declined to comment.
Chawla has more than 30 years of investment banking experience, with the last five years at Barclays. Prior to that, he spent nearly three decades at Citigroup, including as co-head of global insurance investment banking, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Fenchurch was founded in London in 2003 by Malik Karim, a veteran dealmaker and former treasurer of Britain’s Conservative Party. It has subsequently grown to around 70 bankers in London, Paris and New York, all focused on providing advisory services to financial companies on mergers and acquisitions, raising capital and shareholder activism.
Mergers and acquisitions targeting U.S. financial companies reached $137.1 billion in the first seven months of this year, led by Global Payments’ $24.25 billion agreement to buy Worldpay.
While volumes were down versus the same period of 2024, financials remained the third-busiest industry, accounting for around 13% of total U.S. dealmaking, according to LSEG data.
(Reporting by David French in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Jamie Freed)
