JC Perrig

When US-born Andy Cooley, Bank of America Securities’ former head of European debt capital markets, finished his tour of duty and returned to the New York office this March, the bank decided it wanted a European national in the job. Like so many other US banks before, it decided that the only way to demonstrate its long-term commitment to Europe and expand its small European debt business was to hire a banker who had the local market experience and the contacts in origination to make this happen.

It certainly got that with bells on when it recruited JC Perrig, who was previously co-head of CSFB’s European corporate business for cash and derivatives.

Jean Christophe, known to everyone in the market as JC, is Swiss, comes with a string of clients in Italy, France, Germany, Austria and the Benelux countries and speaks fluent English, French and German, in addition to conversational Japanese.

He says: “For a European I’m very average – I work in three languages. My wife is Japanese, so I get by in that as well, but obviously I don’t use that for work. It’s not that impressive, unfortunately.”

Asset stressing Perrig may be unduly modest about his language skills, but it was one of the first things Bill Hodges, head of global debt capital raising at the bank, mentioned to Euromoney about him. For a US bank keen to show that the European debt capital markets business merits more than just a one-year or two-year expat posting, these kinds of signals are important.

One of Perrig’s first tasks since joining the bank early in March has been to figure out precisely what its approach in the European debt capital markets should be. “There’s a strategy-building exercise going on right now and that’s part of my assignment: to look at what are our strengths and weaknesses; to assess the state of the competition; and to define the right strategy for our DCM business.”

But Perrig will spend most of his time, as he did at CSFB, working on origination and making sure that clients are offered all of the bank’s debt market products. “It’s what I enjoy doing and what I do best. I do have existing relationships in various parts of Europe and that combined with the team’s existing coverage will, I think, help us to make progress very quickly.”

The progress will have to be marked if the bank wants to make any impact on the league tables. It’s now showing at 41 in Dealogic’s bookrunner ranking for all euro-denominated issues this year, though Perrig suggests that it will improve partly by using its loan book to help generate more business.

“We will not be number five in Europe in the foreseeable future, that’s for sure,” he concedes. “But I don’t think that’s where we want to be. We have a long way to go now to become more visible but we are already profitable. I won’t say a particular league table objective, but when we reach a higher league table position, we will be able to optimize profitability and have enough credibility to continue to grow revenues.”

Although Perrig’s experience in Europe should help the bank out with its lofty ambition of becoming a debt house doing European deals for European issuers, he also has US client contacts that will prove handy in developing vital cross-border business, either in bringing US issuers to the European market or vice-versa.

Before John Walsh transferred him to London to head CSFB’s European corporate business in 2000, Perrig spent a few years at CSFB in New York where he had two main roles – origination client coverage of US issuers, where he started up CSFB’s GIC business, and international asset-backed origination, bringing US issuers to the European market. He’d had a similar role before that for CSFB in Zurich, where he was working on deals denominated in Swiss francs and did the first ever asset-backed issues in the currency.

Before that he worked as a corporate and capital markets lawyer in both New York and Switzerland but gave that up because he wanted to be on the business side of things.

International outlook His travels have certainly made Perrig adaptable: “I’m Swiss, I’ve travelled quite a bit, I’ve worked in Switzerland, in London and in New York and through my family connections I’m exposed to Asia,” he says. “I cover clients in Italy, France, Germany and Benelux so if you ask me where do I feel most comfortable, the answer is in all of these countries.”

This multinational bent extends to his family: one of his children has a Japanese passport and the other a US one. Travelling to Japan with the family is something that he enjoys. “I don’t get to Japan as much as I would like but we get there every 15 months or so.”

Perrig also has a holiday home in the Swiss Alps where he goes skiing in the winter and hiking and jogging in the summer. “First and foremost come my family and our social life – the weekdays at work can be very long but I try to be disciplined about avoiding work at the weekends or during holidays.”

That makes for long weekdays that often start at 5am when he goes jogging near his home in Fulham, west London. Running is a big hobby and he also manages to fit marathon training into his schedule. “This morning was gorgeous,” he says. “At 5.15am I was out and it was beautiful. The sun was rising, it was very quiet, the birds were singing. In the winter, of course, it’s a bit more challenging.”

He ran the London marathon last year in three hours and 44 minutes, got the bug, and wants to do a different marathon this year. “The last three months of training are pretty tedious but I guess I can get by without sleeping too much, so I can train in off-business hours as well.”

Perrig obviously likes testing himself. He says that after eight years at CSFB, it’s the size of the task ahead that also makes the Bank of America job so appealing. “It’s the difference between being part of trying to sustain an existing business more or less successfully and trying to be part of a growing business with lots of forward momentum and playing a significant role in establishing a franchise. I cannot help being attracted to a challenge.”