Viswas Raghavan: JPM's convertible bond king

Viswas Raghavan, 41, MD-International Capital Markets, JP Morgan has got an over decade long career in the world of investment banking from Lehman Brothers now to JP Morgan. 

He did the typically Indian thing: studied to be a physicist and then did his engineering in Electronics and Computers. But for Viswas Raghavan, money matters. So, he switched to Chartered Accountancy and then joined Lehman Brothers.

At Lehman, Viswas was involved in trading convertible bonds and he took the basic experience to JP Morgan as Head of Equity-linked operations in 2000. This, at a time, when the division needed a boost of energy, and today he is known as the Convertible Bond King.

“I started off in convertible bonds, so I had actually seen convertibles from a trading perspective before moving into banking and being a convertible bond originator. Its about learning the business the hard way and knowing the product inside out.  When I had moved from the trading side to the banking side in the early 90s, my initial kind of my job was just to do pricings and provide valuations for the bankers who are trying to pitch convertible new issues. Then, they found I could explain it better than they could because it was a pretty complex security. Then on, there were big chunky mandates and lots of revenues through the products. So, I just moved in full-time into investment banking and that was my transition from the trading side to the banking side. When I am called Convertible Bond King its probably suppose because I grew up on that product. You are best of what you learned; the first things you learned to do, you are probably best at to this day.”

Viswas Raghavan has played the right strokes with restructuring JP Morgan’s debt capital markets business as well as clinching the big deals.

 Excerpts from CNBC-TV18’s exclusive interview with Viswas Raghavan:

Q: I was reading a book where they sum up investment bankers as creditors constantly on the prowl. Is that how you see yourself?

A: There is an element of truth in that. We are trying to do an extremely comparative business. We are working with the biggest and the brightest and in this day and age, the war for talent is absolutely huge. When you are chasing business, you are basically out there with the best of the best. It becomes a survival of the fittest and let the best person kind of win.

Q: After almost two decades in investment banking, how have you changed personally?

A: Investment banking changes you as a person. If you had to ask my wife, she claims all the time that I am no longer the person she married.

Q: You are married to your Blackberry?

A: Yes, in some ways you change for the better and in some ways it brings out a kind of a beast in you. You become better as a person. You put yourself to very high standards and expect the same from everyone. So, you live life to a very high bar.

Q: There is a lot of talk about the Indian DNA now because we are now seeing Vikram Pandit, Indra Nooyi and a lot of people heading global corporations, especially within the financial services space. Do you think there is an Indian managerial DNA in that sense?

A: We are seeing more and more Indians now come to the fore. The graduates that are coming out of university and B-schools truly have kind of a global opportunity. It’s no longer that there are a handful of places that you went to work for and a handful of things you did after college. The world is really getting small now. It is an absolutely fantastic place to be and the opportunities that these guys have, I never had those kinds of opportunities.

Q: How do you explain what’s going on in the financial markets at this point? There are a whole host of theories and a lot of it is being blamed on subprime woes and so on and so forth. What do you think really happened to cause this sort of meltdown that we are seeing at this point?

A: This is not the first time we are here. This thing happens every five-years, six-years, etc. This is a business of excesses and the markets always overreact on the way up. We get the lofty valuations and excessive liquidity. Markets always overreact on the way down and this is where we are know. We are on the way down phase and are going to see a lot of overreaction. We better fasten our seatbelts.

Q: The whole decoupling theory is being debunked by the way that the Indian and Chinese markets have moved in the last couple of weeks?

A: That was expected. The subsidy on oil prices has been shaken. Interest rates changed so fundamentally. India cannot be isolated from what is going on globally. In a world which is shrinking everyday, it is inevitable.

Q: Where do you really see this headed?

A: This is not a house view this is more of a personal view. I think we are in for a period of tremendous volatility. We are not going to see a mammoth crash. I wish it would just be a mammoth crash and took out pain in one dose and we moved on.

But we are not going to see a mammoth crash. We are going to be in this constant rally corrections scenario, which is going to lead to a lot of volatility in the market. A lot of people think this is the floor and you are going to see the classic- markets go up 20-points and they lose 50-points and net-net they are going down and the trajectory is down.

Q: The one thing that you would like to do, that you haven’t done?

A: That is a tough one. I have no regrets. When I am 70-years old, long gone, long forgotten I just want to look back and have no regrets.