This is the third piece in a series on the bankers who run Wall Street’s largest mergers and acquisitions teams. The first looked at Tom Miles, global co-head of M&A at Morgan Stanley. The second looked at Stephan Feldgoise, head of global M&A at Goldman Sachs. Today’s story is about Anu Aiyengar, who for three years was the only woman running a global M&A franchise at a major Wall Street bank, and who in May 2026 moved up from that job while the market was still busy.
Anu Aiyengar joined JPMorgan in 1999. The bank says she has advised on more than $1 trillion of transactions, including LVMH’s acquisition of Tiffany, Allergan’s sale to AbbVie and Rio Tinto’s acquisition of Arcadium Lithium. In January 2023 she became sole head of the global M&A franchise after co-head Dirk Albersmeier stepped down. Reuters described the appointment as making her the only woman leading that franchise at a major Wall Street bank. In 2025 Business Insider named her the top US M&A banker on its Rainmakers list, the first woman at number one.
On 13 May 2026 she was promoted to global chair of Investment Banking and M&A. Charlie Bouckaert, who had co-headed industrials investment banking, became global head of M&A.
Who runs M&A at JPMorgan now?
Bouckaert has run global M&A since 13 May 2026. He reports to the three new co-heads of Global Investment Banking, Dorothee Blessing, Kevin Foley and Jared Kaye. They report to Filippo Gori and John Simmons, co-heads of the global banking division. The appointments took effect immediately.
Aiyengar remains global chair and still reports to Gori and Simmons. The chair role is meant to support client relationships and strategy. It means Aiyengar is stepping away from day-to-day management. As part of the same reshuffle, JPMorgan put industry coverage groups and sector M&A teams under one umbrella.
Morgan Stanley splits global M&A between two co-heads. Goldman has one head. JPMorgan now has one head of M&A plus a chair.
How did Anu Aiyengar get to the top?
Aiyengar was born in India and moved to the United States as a teenager. She has an undergraduate degree in economics and computer science from Smith College, where she is vice chair of the board of trustees, and an MBA from Vanderbilt. She spent four years at American Express before joining JPMorgan in 1999.
In 2014 Reuters reported a story she has told about interviewing for a Wall Street M&A job in 1999. An unnamed interviewer, she said, told her she had three strikes: “You are the wrong gender, wrong color and wrong country.” The interviewer was not named.
Since then she has built a practice of more than 500 bankers across 45 countries covering M&A, corporate advisory and director advisory services. She sits on JPMorgan’s Global Banking Operating Committee. Barron’s has listed her among the 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance. American Banker has named her among the Most Powerful Women in Finance for five consecutive years, ranking her ninth in 2025. She became co-head of global M&A in 2020 with Albersmeier, and sole head in January 2023.
What deals define her record?
Her current public biographies highlight LVMH-Tiffany, Allergan-AbbVie and Rio Tinto-Arcadium Lithium. JPMorgan’s own page also lists Home Depot‘s acquisition of SRS Distribution, E*Trade’s sale to Morgan Stanley, Siemens Healthineers’ acquisition of Varian and Subway’s sale to Roark Capital. Her stated brief has covered mergers, divestitures and separations, leveraged buyouts, proxy contests, unsolicited approaches and special committee work.
League tables measure the franchise rather than one banker. They show that the book she took over in 2023 was already large, and that the book she handed on in 2026 was larger still.
How does she read the market?
In January she appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss JPMorgan’s annual M&A outlook under the heading “from turbulence to transformation”.
In the first quarter of 2026 JPMorgan’s investment banking fees rose 28 per cent to $2.88 billion. Advisory fees were $1.27 billion, up 82 per cent. The firm ranked first for global investment banking fees in the quarter, with a 9.8 per cent wallet share, according to Dealogic as cited in its earnings materials. Bain, using Dealogic, put global M&A in the first five months of 2026 at $2.4 trillion, up 41 per cent year on year.
Bank notes for the year point to a friendlier US regulatory stance, capital spending tied to AI infrastructure, and a stronger equity market. Higher financing costs have also kept boards cautious on price. A large share of announced value has sat in a small number of large deals.
Who is Charlie Bouckaert?
Bouckaert joined JPMorgan in 2019 as global head of transportation after nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, and has co-headed diversified industries investment banking since 2021. Recent industrials mandates in that coverage area include Lhoist’s $13.5 billion sale of Lhoist North America to Martin Marietta, on which JPMorgan advised the seller, and CRH’s $8.5 billion all-cash acquisition of Arcosa.
The bank has put an industrials sector banker into the global M&A seat at a time when industrials, power and AI infrastructure have been producing a large share of fees.
Why has JPMorgan been losing senior dealmakers?
Senior M&A bankers have been leaving the firm for several years. Guillermo Baygual left in 2025 for Citigroup as co-head of M&A after more than 25 years at JPMorgan. He joined a Citi banking build-out run by Viswas Raghavan, who had been a co-head of JPMorgan’s investment bank before leaving in 2024. By August 2025 the Financial Times had counted at least ten senior JPMorgan investment bankers who had agreed to join Citi.
Marco Caggiano went to Morgan Stanley as vice chairman of M&A in 2023 after 23 years at JPMorgan, where he advised Twitter on its $44 billion sale to Elon Musk. Dan Grabos spent more than 20 years covering M&A at JPMorgan before joining Barclays in 2018. In 2023 Barclays named him co-head of Americas M&A. Albersmeier stepped down as co-head in January 2023 and stayed at the bank in a client-facing role.
Some of that is what happens when a firm trains a large share of the market’s senior dealmakers. It also raises a narrower question about the depth of the pipeline behind JPMorgan’s league-table share.
What happens next?
The title of global chair of Investment Banking and M&A does not come with a public job description. It could mean a full client diary. It could mean a quieter role. There is not yet much on the public record about how Aiyengar is spending her days.
Bouckaert takes over a franchise that has usually sat just behind Goldman, the bank that has spent most of the past two decades at the top of the adviser tables. Feldgoise has run that group since 2020.
Industrials and AI infrastructure would play to the background he brings. A different mix of large deals would test whether that background was the point of the appointment.
Does moving the best-known dealmaker upstairs while volumes are still high look like succession planning, or a risk?
Author: Tejas Bansal
See Also:
Who Is Tom Miles? The Banker Behind Morgan Stanley’s European M&A Surge | Disruption Banking
