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By Sabrina Valle
NEW YORK (Reuters) -JPMorgan Chase & Co has poached three senior investment bankers from Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs to expand the team that caters to the business services sector – and isn’t done yet – in a push to dramatically increase fee revenue, a top banker told Reuters.
John Richert, JPMorgan’s head of the firm’s mid-cap investment banking, says he hopes to quintuple the business services group’s revenue to $500 million over the next three to five years. Hiring, he says, should follow the same pace.
“I’d like to increase headcount in senior level by five times in the next two to three years. I will call it the power of fives,” he said, declining to detail his goals for managing directors.
Business services employ 22.5 million people in the U.S. from electricians to plumbers and office catering. The sector that used to be dominated by mom-and-pop businesses is undergoing a consolidation, as companies are increasingly outsourcing non-core functions like HVAC, janitorial, and landscaping to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
SHIELDED FROM AI
The bank wants to capitalize on a sector largely insulated from tariffs and the threat of AI-driven job substitution.
“Even if you are a clothing manufacturer impacted by tariffs, somebody still has to clean that facility at night,” he said.
Cash availability from private equity firms – which reached an all-time quarterly high of $310 billion in deals in the third quarter – is stimulating deals. These industries, often dominated by small operators, are attracting private equity firms eager to roll up small and regional players into scalable platforms that provide recurring, steady revenue.
“We have a number of private equity meetings per week in which investors are asking to show them everything we have in HVAC, everything we have in restoration, in landscaping,” he said.
JPMorgan plans to leverage its relationships with the 11,000 mid-cap companies served by its commercial banking arm to drive investment banking activity, including M&A.
Richert wants to replicate in Business Services his growth strategy for the Mid-Cap IB division, which has grown from a 30-person team to 250 bankers and from $150 million to over $1 billion in annual revenue since he took the role seven years ago.
Erik Carneal will join as vice chair after 14 years at Deutsche Bank, where he advised on deals across professional, education and commercial services and developed relationships with management teams, boards and financial sponsors. Carneal, who has more than 25 years of investment banking experience, will also help to develop and mentor younger bankers.
David Sweet, previously head of commercial and residential services coverage at Deutsche Bank, will join as managing director focusing on mid- and large-cap clients in that subsector. He has nearly 20 years of experience supporting clients in the sector.
Ye Xia will join as executive director to expand coverage of industrial and commercial services, digital infrastructure and professional services. Xia most recently worked at Goldman Sachs, where she looked after industrial and commercial services clients, and has held roles at Guggenheim and Rothschild & Co.
The hires follow JPMorgan’s addition of Jonathan Slaughter as vice chair in Business Services in London earlier this year.
Carneal, Sweet and Xia will be based in New York and report to Richert. Dana Weinstein leads business services, and Richert will assume the role of global head of business services investment banking coverage upon her retirement next year.
(Reporting by Sabrina Valle in New York. Editing by Dawn Kopecki and Nick Zieminski)
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