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Nimesh Kampani, who split with Morgan Stanley in February this year, is reportedly looking for an international partnership in investment banking. Kampani's investment bank JM Financial wants a global alliance in order to strike big ticket cross border M&A deals for its clients, a report in Business Standard says.

If you want to be part of a Tata-Corus ($10-billion) or a Hindalco-Novelis ($6 billion) deal, then you need to be an i-bank with a strong balance sheet too. In the case of Corus deal, Tata Steel was advised by ABN AMRO, Deutsche Bank and Rothschild. ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank, among others, had provided funding to Tata in the Corus acquistion. In large global M&As, the funding abilities will also matter. Kampani could be try to bridge this gap through an alliance.

By the way, JM also has a $50 million Special Situation Fund (proprietary investment), from which it will invest in publicly listed companies (through preferential allotment). It had recently invested $5.5 million in the Mumbai-based Ankur Drugs and Pharmaceuticals from this fund. It's run by Basant Agarwal.

JM also has a $200 million fund in partnership with Old Lane Partners of Vikram Pandit (Old Lane was recently bought out by Citigroup, and is now part of its Alternative Investment division). This fund has investments in Delhi-based Genesis Colors, Punjab-based International Tractors and the Gurgaon-based autocomponent firm Sona group. JM is also looking at launching its second private equity fund of $400-500 million sometime soon.