Valores Capital Partners (VCP), a new boutique merchant bank with offices and senior personnel in New York and Mumbai, has launched with the intention of focusing on "high growth/high margin" businesses within the global financial services sector.
Within the financial services sector, Valores has a dual focus. One is the global investment management industry and affiliated sectors such as brokerage, financial technology and service providers to the investment community including administrators/custodians, index providers and analytics companies. The second is a broader financial institutions focus in India and ultimately, developing Asia.
Valores provides M&A and corporate finance advisory services including private capital raising and also works selectively with clients on high-level strategic issues.
Karamvir Gosal, the firm’s founder and managing member, previously served as a senior banker within the financial institutions groups at Jefferies, Credit Suisse, and Putnam Lovell and advised on several US as well as cross-border transactions involving Asian financial companies.
CL Handa, Valores’ managing director in India, previously was head of SBI Merchant Banking in New Delhi, the investment banking arm of State Bank of India, the country’s largest bank. He also served as head of Southeast Asia for SBI and was managing director at Sobhagya Capital, an Indian boutique investment bank.
Hal Strong and Phil Maisano, two veteran investment management industry executives, serve as senior advisers to Valores. Strong, an operating executive with private equity firm Genstar Capital, is a former vice chairman, COO and CFO of Russell Investments. Maisano is a former vice chairman and chief investment officer at Dreyfus and chief investment strategist at parent company BNY Mellon Asset Management.
"Faced with shifting investor preferences, heightened macro event risks and uncertain and somewhat schizophrenic markets, investment managers are facing a unique set of challenges," Gosal says. "Moreover, the higher growth and savings rates and increasing share of world financial assets of the developing markets, coupled with their unique market structures and nascent stage of development has profound implications for global financial players, particularly asset and wealth managers. With our deep domain knowledge, extensive transaction and operational experience, broad network of relationships, and on- the-ground presence in both North America and Asia, Valores is well positioned to offer our clients strategic advice in both their home markets and internationally. We’re also delighted to offer our expertise to clients attracted by opportunities in developing markets that are both rapidly growing and highly complex to navigate successfully."
