Weekly Global News Wrap: State-owned Russian bank files lawsuit against JP Morgan; Morgan Stanely names new wealth management head

And minority- and women- owned investment banks are making small waves in Wall Street.

From Reuters:
State-owned Russian Agricultural Bank has filed a lawsuit against JP Morgan in a Moscow court, court files showed on Tuesday.

The court is yet to start processing the lawsuit filed on 20 November.

Russian Agricultural Bank, the main financial intermediary for Russian food and fertiliser exports, has been hit by Western sanctions and disconnected from the SWIFT international payment system.

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From Reuters:
Morgan Stanley has named Jed Finn as head of its wealth management unit, according to an internal memo by Reuters on Monday.

Finn, currently the chief operating officer of the division, joined the investment bank in 2011 and has held several leadership roles in the business, the memo said.

The appointment, effective 1 January, comes weeks after the bank named Ted Pick as its new chief executive officer.

From Bloomberg:
When drugmaker Amgen sold $24b of bonds in February to fund its takeover of Horizon Therapeutics, it had 12 banks as joint bookrunners and a further 16 as co-managers on the deal. Eight of the 16 were small investment banks certified as owned by women, minorities or military veterans.

In April, a $5b bond sale from Walmart had seven similarly owned investment banks out of 15 co-managers, while on RTX’s $6b issue in September, all seven co-managers were like this.

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These brokers may now be involved in a lot more deals, but their share of fees remains tiny — just 3% of the total paid by issuers so far this year and 3.5% in 2022, according to analysis from Independence Point Advisors, a women-owned investment bank.