There's a hot new posting for Wall Street bankers
JPMorgan has just hired Brennan Spry as head of corporate client banking and specialized industries (CCBSI) in the South, for example. Spry previously worked in Barclays' investment banking division.
Spry will be based in Atlanta, and will oversee a team of bankers in the region who provide services to large companies with more than $500 million in annual revenues.
In addition, the bank has hired Nina Sprinkle to the corporate client banking team in Atlanta as a senior banker, with responsibility for serving companies in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. She previously worked in syndicated and leveraged finance at SunTrust and Bank of America.
Matt Tugwell has also joined as a senior banker, focusing on the Carolinas. He was most recently at Bank of America in the leveraged finance group.
JPMorgan isn't the only bank hiring staff for or moving staff to regional centers in the US. The potential rewards are significant: Middle-market companies in the US and Canada paid $8.2 billion in deal fees in 2015, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch presentation.
That's more than the fees netted in most of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America combined.
"This is a key focus for us as we have developed the other areas of our investment bank," Christian Meissner, the head of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told Business Insider last year. "Relatively speaking, this represents a greater opportunity than some traditional avenues of growth."