JPMorgan’s Julian Peck steers investment bank to year’s biggest deals
Less than a year since returning to banking, Julian Peck, JPMorgan’s head of investment banking for Australia and New Zealand, has hit the ground running with large deals, but admitted there is work to do for the US bank to claw market share away from rivals like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Mr Peck helped Albemarle draft a $6.6 billion offer for local lithium player Liontown Resources on Monday; on Tuesday, JPMorgan put pens down on a $US4.75 billion ($7.4 billion) bond sale supporting BHP’s $9.6 billion acquisition of Oz Minerals; and the US bank advised gold miner Newcrest on its $26.6 billion agreement with peer Newmont Mining earlier this year.
Julian Peck, JPMorgan’s head of investment banking, returned to the fray in November and he’s already won big deals, but wants a greater share of the private capital market.
Mr Peck joined JPMorgan from APA Group last November after nearly 15 years at Morgan Stanley. The move to APA in 2020 suggested he was done with the cutthroat world of investment banking. But Mr Peck returned, and Albemarle’s move on Liontown was a reminder of just how competitive M&A is.
JPMorgan had been advising Albemarle since October. It took four bids to find a palatable agreement with Liontown. The roughly 10-month saga highlighted the cumbersome back-and-forth of public company M&A, while the introduction of Barrenjoey Partners as a financial adviser to Albemarle just weeks before this month’s offer was the subject of scuttlebutt.
Rivals quipped Barrenjoey got the gig to add a West Australian presence to the deal, something JPMorgan poured cold water on.
Indeed, companies often appoint multiple financial advisers on a large transaction, and because the market knew for months that JPMorgan
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