JPMorgan
JPMorgan has been the most innovative in this field over the past year and has topped the league tables in Europe as well as placing highly in the US and in Asia.
In Europe, JPMorgan has grabbed headlines for its role in developing the exchangeable structure as a privatization tool. Exchangeables have been used in privatizations before but it was the e5 billion Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) exchangeable into Deutsche Telekom in 2003 that really cemented the product?s reputation for this use. As well as being the largest-ever equity-linked deal anywhere, the deal, which JPMorgan executed flawlessly along with Deutsche Bank, paved the way for a number of other privatization transactions.
After KfW, JPMorgan worked with Österreichische Industriedholding AG (OIAG), the Austrian privatization agency, on two privatization exchangeables into Telekom Austria and steel-maker Voestalpine. The Voestalpine exchangeable was another ground-breaking deal because it was the first combined equity and equity-linked deal for a public entity.
JPMorgan worked on five of the six privatization exchangeables of the past year, making it a clear leader in the field.
In November 2003 JPMorgan proved the portability of its Floating Rate Equity-linked Subordinated Hybrid (Fresh) structure by executing a e700 million deal in Italy for Banca Monte dei Paschi Siena.