To many Indians, Manisha Girotra is the face in the Indian investment banking. Born in Chandigarh, India, she obtained a bachelor’s degree from St. Stephens’ College and a Master’s from the Delhi School of Economics. She graduated as gold medallist and started a career with a meagre salary of $35 per month. Banking was in her veins as her father headed UCO bank.
She joined UBS in the year 1998 and rose to the position of Chairman and Managing director before resigning in Nov 2011. While at UBS she executed several blockbuster deals such as the $12 billion Vodafone acquisition of Hutch Essar, the $6 billion Novelis-Hindalco deal, and the $1.2 billion Whyte & Mackey-UB (United Breweries), all of which contributed to her listing as one of the ‘Top 50 Global Women to Watch’ by The Wall Street Journal. She has been involved in the ADR offerings of Infosys and ICICI Bank, and the privatisation of VSNL, IPCL and BALCO. She describes here initial years at UBS to be the most difficult one as she was exposed to a lot of long pending deals. As per Manisha, the toughest deal which she faced was the disinvestment of the state owned IPCL to Reliance Industries ltd as lot of ministries were involved. She believes that M&A required a very high level of tenacity.
After finishing her dual degree in Economics from LSE, Manisha began her investment banking career in London in the corporate bank at ANZ Grindlays where she served from 1992 to 1994. From 1994 until 1996, she was Head for North India at Barclays Bank, responsible for marketing and credit support to corporates and managing the relationship with the government. Since July 2012, Manisha has been India Head of Moelis & Company (a US based Bank). She serves on the boards of KPIT Cummins and Technip. She was honored as a ‘Young Global Leader’ in 2010 by the World Economic Forum and was named one of the ‘15 Women to Watch in Asia’ by Forbes in 2008. She appeared in Business Today’s ‘25 Most Powerful Women in Business in India’ continuously for five years.
On her personal front, she is married to Mr Sanjay Agarwal who is MD and Head (Investment Banking), Deutsche Bank.
