Credit Suisse, First NZ venture hires bankers

Credit Suisse Group AG and First NZ Capital’s mid market and small cap investment banking joint venture has hired Daniel Janes to head investment banking from Sydney while Credit Suisse’s Peter Paltoglou will lead a Melbourne-based investment banking team.

Paltoglou is currently responsible for the Swiss investment bank’s middle market banking activities in Australia. Janes joins the venture after previously working at Barclays, where he was former co-head of investment banking in Australia.

The joint venture between Credit Suisse and First NZ will be called Credit Suisse Emerging Companies Australia. It is awaiting regulatory approval but will offer equity capital markets and merger and acquisition advice to companies with market values of less than $2 billion.

Scott St John, First NZ’s chief executive, has said the new venture will initially have 10 people, comprising five analysts and five investment bankers. St John expects that number to grow as the new entity covers more companies that are not property, mining or oil and gas producers.

Bulge-bracket investment banks such as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, faced with a dearth of deals in the last two years, have sought to become the bankers of choice to companies they previously thought too small as the fees generated from such transactions was thought to be uneconomic.

Credit Suisse and First NZ’s venture is one of the first that seeks to exploit the global network of the Zurich-based investment bank with the bespoke advice given by boutique firms such as First NZ, Fort Street, Greenhill & Co or Gresham Advisory Partners Ltd.