From DSP ML to Citi: Vikas Khattars big move

The last couple of years have been exciting for the Investment Banking community to say the least. The action though has not been limited to large ticket deals. One gets to hear about high profile moves every now and then. DSP ML seems to have been affected more than others with movements of Munesh Khanna and Sanjay Sharma.

Vikas Khattar is the latest to make the big move. Citi India has poached Khattar from DSP Merrill Lynch to add strength to its equity capital markets team. He will be joining in as a Director early next month. Khattar is an MBA from IIM Calcutta and an engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science. He was a veteran at DSP Merrill Lynch with 11 years experience.

Citi’s equity capital markets team is headed by another erstwhile DSP Merrill Lynch stalwart, Ravi Kapoor. Kapoor left DSP ML, where he was head of equity origination and capital markets, in April 2005 to kick-start the same business for Citi. Khattar will be part of Kapoor's team, which reports to Pramit Jhaveri, who heads investment banking for Citi in India.

For its part DSP Merrill Lynch is also on a hiring spree since Merrill Lynch bought out its Indian partner in December 2005. DSP is aggressively foraying into new areas including private wealth management, real estate and principal investing and hiring to staff these businesses. Indeed, worldwide Merrill Lynch has been beefing up its global private client non-resident Indian (NRI) business at the cost of Citi and has lured Rahul Malhotra, Inderjeet Hora and Aseem Arora from Citi in the last few months.

Source: Finance Asia