CLSA bags Shankar

In further evidence of Bank of America's flagging commitment to investment banking in Asia, CLSA has hired BofA's head of investment banking, Viswanthan Shankar.

Shankar will oversee advisory, origination, structuring and underwriting of CLSA's client transactions and will be primarily focused on structured finance and debt products. He will report to CLSA's executive vice-chairman, Mike McCoy.

Says McCoy: "Shankar's achievements in the industry will be a great asset in increasing CLSA's competiveness in providing innovative structured lending products for our corporate clients."

Shankar spent 19 years in the highly institutionalized atmosphere of Bank of America, and so the move to the more entrepreneurial CLSA should provide him with an exciting cultural change.

From CLSA's perspective, his arrival will help to build the firm's corporate finance abilities, an area that the brokerage firm has been trying to enhance for a considerable period of time.