JPMorgan Hires no.1 Ranked Japanese Equity Sales Team in Germany

Business Wire, July 20, 2001

Business Editors

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 20, 2001

JPMorgan announced today that it hired Shinji Sano and Christiane Bernartz to lead the firm's Japanese equity sales effort for German clients.

The team joins from Merrill Lynch where they were voted number one in Japanese equity sales by German clients in the 2000 Greenwich Research Survey. Working from Frankfurt, they will replace Gundula Richter who announced her retirement in June.

"We embarked upon a program in January to build the top-ranked global equity sales team in Germany," said David Scully, head of JPMorgan's equity sales business in Germany. "Shinji and Christiane are the best Japanese sales team in the market, and we are very pleased to have them working for our clients." JPMorgan has added 18 sales professionals to its global equities team in Germany since January.

"Hires of this caliber demonstrate our commitment to further building our Japanese offerings," said Giles Herdman, head of Japanese equities for Europe at JPMorgan.

Mr. Sano has nearly 15 years experience in Japanese equities. After graduating from Keio University in 1987, he attended the Nomura's scholarship program at Munich University and went on to become a salesperson covering German clients for that firm. He became head of Japanese equity sales for Germany in 1995 and retained this title when he moved to Merrill Lynch in 1997. Ms. Bernartz has worked with him for the past seven years at Nomura and Merrill Lynch.

The new team joins Werner Schuenemann, JPMorgan's salesperson for Asian equities, who has been ranked number one in the Greenwich Research Survey for three consecutive years.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is a premier global financial services firm with assets of $713 billion and operations in more than 50 countries. The firm is a leader in investment banking, asset management, private equity, custody and transaction services, retail and middle market financial services, and e-finance. Headquartered in New York, JPMorgan Chase serves more than 30 million consumer customers and the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients.