NH Investment & Securities, the second-largest securities brokerage firm in Korea, will join hands with Evercore Partners, a leading independent mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, in order to boost its global competitiveness.

The two companies said Wednesday that they signed a strategic alliance agreement to work together on cross-border investments of businesses at home and abroad, providing them with one-stop advisory services for successful M&A deals. 


Under the agreement, NH and Evercore will discover M&A opportunities, exchange market information and offer advice for their clients together.

Evercore is one of the top three global advisory firms that purely offers advisory services for corporate M&A and investments. Although it has been operating for just 20 years, the company’s rivals are Rothschild, which has been doing business for 205 years, and Lazard, with 165 years under its belt.

CEO Ralph Schlosstein, co-founder of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, set up the firm in 1995. It has more than 1,400 professional staffers working at its offices in nine countries and has overseen $2 trillion in M&A deals.

“This exclusive alliance is important in the sense that we are partnering to connect the world’s biggest and 11th largest economy,” said Schlosstein. “We decided to extend the partnership to a strategic level as we anticipate increasing outbound transactions from Korea to the US and other countries like (in) South America, while interests in Korean businesses are growing in the US.”

In order to step in the global investment banking market as the Korean government hopes, local securities firms are in need of cooperation with foreign investment banks to get a wide global network for sales that can reach influential market players.

“NH has been running the advisory business for 20 years, although we are not yet No. 1 in the market,” said Jeong Young-chae, vice president of the investment banking division at NH. “Our goal is not to be the first, but provide clients with total solutions that will help make global M&A deals successful.”

By Song Su-hyun  (song@heraldcorp.com)