Morgan Stanley Names a Top Consumer and Retail Banker in Asia

By P.R. Venkat 

SINGAPORE-- Morgan Stanley said one of its global co-heads for consumer and retail investment banking will be based in Asia, signaling the increasing importance of deals in those fast-growing sectors in the region.

David Aronovitch, a longtime Morgan banker who is based in Hong Kong, will share his role with two other executives, according to an internal memo. A Morgan Stanley spokesman confirmed the contents of the memo.

Mr. Aronovitch, 41 years old, joined Morgan Stanley in 1998 as an analyst in its global capital markets division in New York,. He has also worked in London and Singapore for the bank. He been running the consumer and retail group in Asia since 2009.

He has recently worked on cross-border deals for the firm, including McDonald's Corp.'s sale last year of its restaurants in China to a consortium of local investors and private-equity firms. He also advised Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 2016 on the sale of its Chinese e-commerce business to retailer JD.com Inc., and worked on the sale of South Korea's Oriental Brewery to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2014.

Morgan Stanley's two other co-heads of consumer and retail banking, David Ciagne and Ben Frost, are based in New York.

Mr. Aronovitch's appointment highlights a growing appetite for cross-border deals among companies looking to expand in domestic and overseas markets in the consumer sector. Last year, Morgan Stanley led Southeast Asian mergers-and-acquisition league tables by volume, advising on deals worth a total of $30.3 billion across all industries, according to Dealogic data.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 23, 2018 03:22 ET (08:22 GMT)

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