Anu Aiyengar: Wall Street veteran

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Early Life

Aiyengar grew up in Kerala and excelled at academics, particularly science and maths. She was also a classical dancer and keenly participated in debates and other extracurricular activities in school. Though she wasn’t sure about what exactly she wanted to pursue as a career, Aiyengar was clear about one thing: Having her own identity and wanting to be her own person.

“That translated in my head as being financially independent such that I have my own money, because as I observed society and people around me, I thought if you were dependent on somebody else, then they get to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do in life,” Aiyengar adds.

An encounter with a librarian, in a way, proved to be life-changing as it led Aiyengar to earn a scholarship and persuade her parents to allow her to go to the US to study economics at Smith College. Her stint at the women’s college laid the foundation of her career as a leading investment banker.

Breaking the glass ceiling  

“A central belief of mine is that if you always go back to how it was done before, you will be limited in your creativity and your possibilities,” Aiyengar says.

This approach helped Aiyengar navigate challenges and broaden her horizons. The job in itself was not difficult. The harder part was adapting to the new professional environment. But as Aiyengar climbed the ladder, she found herself at greater ease with some help from mentors inside and outside the firm.

“I moved away from trying to change myself to fit an American mould to figuring out a way to be myself, but within the context of the work I do. The years I was a VP and director was probably the time when I figured that out for myself,” she adds.

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After she assumed leadership roles, Aiyengar developed her own style of management to help her team perform better. She believes that each person has different strengths and capabilities. “As opposed to trying to change them, it’s important to make them become, and help them become, the best version of themselves,” she says.

 

In February 2020, when she took over as head of the global M&A business, a month before Covid-induced lockdowns, she understood what her team needed from her during a phase of extreme uncertainty. “They were expecting me to be available, empathetic, vulnerable, not pretend that I had an answer, but kind of admit that look, I’m trying to figure this out too… ‘let’s try and figure this out together’, and that was a big learning for me to navigate those three months,” Aiyengar reminisces.  

 

Aiyengar’s expertise and leadership, coupled with conducive market conditions, helped her team to close multi-billion-dollar deals, turning the next 18 months—July 2020 to December 2021—into one of the best periods for JP Morgan’s global M&A business. Similarly, having experienced the dotcom bubble crash and the global financial crisis, Aiyengar was swiftly able to steady the ship when the markets turned choppy and deals dried up in 2022 once the interest rate hiking cycle started.

However, the dealmaker is optimistic that the current calendar year will be better than 2023 for M&A activity. The valuation gap has narrowed and investors are more realistic after the market euphoria caused by an avalanche of liquidity. She believes private equity firms have close to $2.5 trillion available for investments that they are likely to deploy in the coming two to three years. “India is a part of the world that we are very optimistic about,” Aiyengar adds.