India and Morgan Stanley have lost one of their most senior women bankers with the passing of Aisha de Sequeira, the bank’s co-head for India, who has died aged just 51.
De Sequeira, a senior M&A figure who ran Morgan Stanley’s investment banking operations in India, had been with the firm for 25 years and was India co-head for eight of them.
She was involved in many key deals in India, including Nippon’s investment into Reliance Life and Reliance Asset Management, and the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular.
Legacy
But her legacy will be the final big deal she worked on as the lead India-based banker on a set of strategic stake sales in Jio Platforms, backed by Reliance Industries and its founder Mukesh Ambani.
Jio, which combines all of Reliance Industries’ digital and telecommunications initiatives into a new venture, succeeded in assembling an extraordinary shareholder roster between April and July, starting with Facebook’s $5.7 billion purchase of a 9.9% stake in the business.
It was later joined by Google and some of the biggest names in private equity (Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, KKR), Middle East sovereign wealth (Adia, Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s PIF), and finally fellow tech names (Intel, Qualcomm).
De Sequeira was instrumental in the whole process as adviser to Reliance Industries.
De Sequeira hailed from Goa, where her family had been active in public life. Her passing in a New York hospital was confirmed by her husband, Roy de Souza, founder of internet advertising company Zedo.
“Those of us who have known her for all these many years, from bullpen to boardroom, are particularly heartbroken,” said an internal Morgan Stanley memo announcing the news.
Euromoney sends its condolences to her family and friends.
