Goldman Sachs poaches senior healthcare dealmaker from JPMorgan

Goldman continues to poach senior bankers from rivals.LinkedIn

• Goldman Sachs has bolstered its healthcare investment banking practice with yet another senior hire from a rival.
• Benjamin Wallace, a managing director in mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan Chase, has left his old firm and will join Goldman later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.  
• Wallace has specialized in healthcare transactions, which has been one of the hottest M&A sectors in 2018.
• It’s the latest in a string of outside hires by Goldman Sachs. 

Goldman Sachs has poached yet another senior dealmaker to bolster its healthcare investment banking practice. 

Benjamin Wallace, a managing director in mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan Chase, has left his old firm and will join Goldman later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.  

Wallace has spent his entire Wall Street career at JPMorgan, according to LinkedIn, joining as a summer associate in 2006 and getting promoted to managing director in 2016. He spent much of his time on healthcare deals, as well as shareholder defense and activism, and has worked on more than $500 billion in announced transactions, according to a bio from Harvard Business School from 2017. 

JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. 

He’s the second senior healthcare investment banker Goldman has hired in the past couple weeks, following the hire of Jonathan Piazza from Barclays earlier this month. 

Worldwide M&A activity has totaled $2.5 trillion during the first half of 2018, the strongest start to a year for deals in history. Healthcare was among the most active sectors for M&A, comprising about 13% of this activity thanks to deals such as Takeda’s $62 billion takeover of Shire and Cigna’s $67 billion acquisition of Express Scripts.

Wallace and Piazza are the latest in a slew of outside hires from rival firms by Goldman. Other recent hires from competitors include senior tech banker Kurt Simon from JPMorgan; consumer banker Ben Frost from Morgan Stanley; and industrials banker Chris Gallea from JPMorgan.

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