Ajit Hutheesing - Career

Career

Ajit was one of the first Indians in Wall Street when he started his investment banking career in 1960 with Loeb, Rhoades & Co. In 1962, he joined S.G. Warburg & Company in London as part of his investment banking training. He returned to India in 1963 to start the first investment bank but when his cousin, Indira Gandhi, became Prime Minister and started nationalizing banks and insurance companies, he decided to leave India. Following the advice and introduction of Sir Siegmund Warburg, Chairman of S.G. Warburg & Company, he joined the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment banking arm of the World Bank in 1965. He spent 10 years at IFC during most of which he headed IFC’s investment activities in the southern cone countries of South America. In 1972 he became the youngest director of IFC (at that time) heading the department responsible for management, syndications and dispositions of its rapidly growing equity and loan portfolios representing over 200 investments worldwide and valued in 1975 at $900 million.

In 1975, at the invitation of an old friend, Mr. James D. Wolfensohn, then President and CEO of Schroders USA (ex-President of the World Bank), Ajit joined J. Henry Schroder Corporation (JHSC), New York, as its Managing Director and as Director of Schroder International. JHSC was the investment banking arm of Schroders PLC in the U.S. Its main activities were M&A, private placements and managing a venture capital pool. Ajit spent considerable time in Brazil developing business for Schroders. He was named Vice Chairman of J. Henry Schroder Corporation in 1982.

He joined The Sherwood Group, New York, in 1986 as Chairman to help the company raise substantial new capital and to build its corporate finance capabilities. Sherwood (later National Discount Brokers bought by Deutsch Bank) was one of the major wholesale market makers in the over-the-counter market and an underwriter and distributor of securities to the retail sector of the investment industry. While at Sherwood, Ajit was the only non-American Chairman of a Wall Street investment banking and securities trading company. Upon the death of the founder and majority shareholder, Ajit presided over the sale of Sherwood and left the company in February 1988, to start ICP.

Currently, Ajit is committed to utilizing his connections in and knowledge of India and the United States to build both philanthropic and business bridges between these countries. On the investment front, his interest is to bring private equity capital to India from the United States and to eventually channel capital from high net worth families in India to the United States.