(Bloomberg) — Bank of America Corp. has hired Rahul Bhandari from JPMorgan Chase & Co. as managing director and co-head of its private capital markets business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Bhandari will take up the new role in the early summer, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. Based in London, he’ll work alongside EMEA private markets co-head Aga Masud. Bhandari was previously head of EMEA private capital markets at JPMorgan.
A representative for Bank of America confirmed the contents of the memo.
Banks are dedicating ever more resources to their private capital teams, as startups continue to chase new money at elevated valuations. Cryptocurrency firm Blockchain.com and Turkish grocery-delivery company Getir were each valued at more than $10 billion in recent funding rounds, while Swedish payments firm Klarna Bank AB is weighing plans to raise capital at a valuation of roughly $50 billion to $60 billion.
To be sure, the pace of fundraising by startups has started to cool as pressures on valuations in the public markets ramp up. Venture capital transactions raised $148 billion globally in the first quarter, down nearly 25% from the last three months of 2021, according to data provided by analytics firm PitchBook.
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