Dutch lender ING has appointed Gautam Saxena as its head of corporate finance for the Asia-Pacific region, with responsibility for driving the bank’s corporate finance strategy across its 11 markets in the region – Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Saxena will report functionally to Rob Van Veldhuizen, global head of corporate finance. Saxena is a seasoned investment banker with a 25-year career across Asia-Pacific and North America. He has been a senior adviser to large and medium-sized corporates, multinationals, family-owned conglomerates and early-stage businesses where he has established long-term meaningful relationships and driven stakeholder value creation.
He has worked closely with CEOs, company boards and investment institutions on their strategic priorities driven by his extensive deal experience across mergers, acquisitions, divestments, growth capital investments, equity and debt capital markets, capital structuring, private equity, venture capital and impact investing.
His last banking role was at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) as the co-head of telecom, media and technology investment banking for Asia-Pacific. He was with Merrill Lynch/BAML for 15 years and has held investment banking roles at HSBC, ABN AMRO and Lazard. He has worked across Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and India.
As well, he has forayed into the investment world and founded Pegasus 7 Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in technology-enabled impact businesses in Asia and Africa with a focus on sustainability.
“Saxena is a senior investment banker and venture capitalist whose depth of experience across Asia and in the US, along with his focus on sustainability,” Rob says, “makes him a strong addition to our global investment banking team, a key growth area for us.”
