JPMorgan hires KKR’s Bauer to lead equity capital markets team

Bauer will be co-head of ECM Americas alongside Keith Canton, who has been sole head for the last year-and-a-half, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg News. 

Bauer has spent roughly six years with KKR as its head of ECM, and previously worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for more than a decade. At JPMorgan, Bauer will be based in New York and report to Kevin Foley, global head of capital markets.

A representative for JPMorgan confirmed the contents of the memo.

JPMorgan is a big adviser to US companies on ECM transactions and has worked on about $2.3 billion of IPOs on US exchanges this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 

This summer, the Wall Street firm has hired Bank of America Corp. veteran Sumit Mukherjee as head of ECM markets intelligence and Tegh Kapur from Morgan Stanley as a managing director in technology ECM and head of ECM venture capital coverage.

Craig Lee, a partner who was most recently head of insurance and strategic finance at KKR, will be taking over Bauer’s responsibilities as head of ECM and co-invest at the firm.

“We are proud of the dynamic and powerful capital markets business that we’ve built,” a spokesperson for KKR said in a statement. “There is a tremendous opportunity ahead and we are confident that we have the right team in place to make the most of it.”

Launched in 2007, KKR’s capital markets group has raised more than $1.6 trillion of debt and equity financing for its companies and third-party clients, according to a KKR 2024 Investor Day transcript.

(Adds detail on JPMorgan, KKR businesses from fifth paragraph.)