Hancock, Merton and Mendoza launch Integrated Finance

IFL will operate as a specialised investment bank offering strategic advice and integrated risk-based services to companies engaged in corporate finance, capital markets and pension finance. The firm intends to invest its own capital as a principal to assist in the implementation of services on behalf of clients. IFL’s backers believe the firm can offer superior service to customers and excess risk-adjusted returns to its clients’ shareholders.

Dutch merchant bank NIB Capital and insurance and reinsurance company, Ace, are supporting IFL. Each has placed three of their representatives on the company’s board to join Hancock, Merton and Mendoza. The specific shareholding structure was not revealed.

Hancock was previously chief financial officer at JP Morgan. Mendoza was vice-chairman of JP Morgan before he moved to Goldman Sachs as a senior relationship manager in 2000. Merton is a Nobel-prize winning professor at Harvard Business School.

The trio had earlier teamed up with JP Morgan’s former head of proprietary trading, Doug Dachille, in an attempt to buy Gen Re Securities from US investor Warren Buffet. Following their failure to complete the transaction, Dachille left to work as chief operating officer at Zurich Capital Markets.

IFL will operate out of New York, London and Tokyo.