YouSaid · the spoken record

Melissa Smith

lines on the record: 70
first: 2025-02-27
most recent: 2025-02-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think because I started in the investment bank and then by definition was really working with primarily larger size companies, I think, as I kind of mentioned earlier, understanding how different it is. And the fact that you have the ability to make an even bigger difference for a smaller size company that needs that sort of trusted advisor even more, I think it would be sort of good to know, right? Because it is, I think financial services overall you have the ability to take on a lot more responsibility at an early age than other industries. But I think, again, the ability to kind of influence and advise in early stage company is just incredibly rewarding given the limited resources staff that they have.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think to make sure that they embrace risk taking. And I say that because maybe just because I myself maybe I'm a little bit risk averse, but I think over the course of your career, you have the opportunity often to do many different things. And a lot of times people are afraid to sort of leave their current group and do something different. And it just opens up a whole world of possibilities. So I think sort of taking a little bit more risk than you might naturally do is always good advice.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're talking about the same guy, right? And he has funny titles, which I love heartbreaking work of staggering genius, one of his first books. Love that book. Yeah.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I finished a biography of Alexeya Monsky, who's a choreographer. I don't think many listening to this podcast may find that book interesting, but I did a new fiction by Michael Cunningham called Day. So those were all really good. Some of my favorite authors, Isabelle Allendig, Dave Edgar's. What I would”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, favorites are hard, but what I'm reading right now. So I actually just finished over the holidays. I tend to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. Because I think both are important. I finished Chasing Hope, the Nicholas Christoph book. He's a foreign correspondent for The Times, which is interesting.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly So I would say I feel very lucky when I was most of my career when I was in debt capital markets, I worked for a woman who ran DCM at the time and then she went on to do different things at the firm who was very much a sponsor, mentor for me overall and has just over time she's retired now from JP Morgan but sort of become a friend. But I think that's where I really I think learned and embraced kind of just this concept of attracting talent retaining talent helping to kind of bring up the next generation of women is a responsibility of senior people and she really demonstrated that and certainly I took that to heart.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Same concept. I will admit I've watched it a couple of times. Oh, really? I thought it was great. Yes, exactly. I think it's a good pick-me-up, particularly when partisan politics are, you know.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I follow there you go. I might have to get that up at some point. I am currently streaming, I guess the second season of the diplomat, which I'm very much enjoying. So good. I love the political action thrillers, but I think I'm running out of them because I've watched all of them at this point. Lionet.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm sort of very religious about getting through the Economist and the New Yorker every week. And I won't let myself read the next issue of the Economist until I finish the first one. So even if I'm behind, I do that.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first, I would say I am sort of an avid reader. I was talking with a colleague on my way over here. Everybody consumes information differently. I consume it better reading, I think, than always listening. Same way.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I would have, I don't think so, but I'm not 100% positive. But I don't think so. Our previous chair, who retired at the end of last year, his sister. Danced with a company for many years, and that's really how he became involved. And obviously, you know, very passionate about the ballet.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's always a few, but certainly the majority of people on the board don't have a background in dance. And as I always remind everybody, I call it the separation between church and state. The board is there to sort of help with the business of running the ballet company. They have no input whatsoever to anything artistic, which is why it's not required that you have any sort of backgrounded.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People are aware of ABT, helping with fundraising, helping attract new donors, helping attract and develop new audience members.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“15 plus years. Yeah, so a long time. So again, American Valley Theater, one of the greatest ballet companies in the world, based here in New York, officially designated by Congress as America's National Ballet Company. And actually, as of January of this year, I'm the new chair of the board of ABT, which is super exciting. But, you know, the board obviously has its basic sort of governance functions. But we spend a lot of time helping with fundraising for the organization and helping provide expertise where each individual has it, any nonprofit obviously has a much more limited sort of staff overall. So if there's people on the board that have real estate expertise or finance expertise or HR expertise, that is very valuable to the organization as a whole. So there's always sort of special projects that we sort of participate in from that perspective. But a big chunk of what the board does is really making sure.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And ask all of those questions so that you're a little more educated coming in about sort of what the opportunities are overall.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would just say really taking advantage of friends, colleagues, you know, your network, peers, to understand all aspects of the industry. And that's hard to do sometimes when you're in college and you're not sort of sitting in the organization. But I do think, and this is not a commentary on females versus males, but just sort of back to the networking point, you have kind of a natural advantage if your parent was an investment banker or a lawyer or you write that dealt with sort of the banking industry or pick pick another sort of adjacent profession. And so those individuals know the right questions to ask are more aware of the opportunities across the firm of centralized investment banking. There's lots of other things we do at JPMorgan or any firm. So I think just making sure that you're figuring out how to kind of gather that information.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Understanding what the challenges are and if there's anything that you can do or should be doing to have a more sort of accommodative environment, an inclusive environment.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who was that? There are many, many females on the operating committee, so we've done a great job there. And I think that that's kind of filtered down throughout the organization. So yes, I do think it has improved substantially. I do still think there's a lot of challenges, particularly at that sort of VP, late VP, early ED level, early executive director level. A lot of times when people are having sort of their first children and sort of making sure that we're providing a supportive environment that they're able to obviously come back to work as they would like to. But yes, I think significant progress has been made. But I think that is a very intentional effort back to kind of understanding why if we are losing female employees or diverse employees why that is in the same way that we want to understand why we're losing any employee, right? Any talented employee, we don't want to lose. But I think you have to be just very intentional about measuring progress and”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think that a lot of progress has been made overall. I think JP Morgan, not to toot our own horn, but I think is a great example for the industry where you look at, you know, our operating committee, which are the individuals that report directly to Jamie. You know, it is heavily female.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I very much take that as a serious responsibility and sort of part of my day job. We have various, I would say, organized programs and then there's more informal mentorship programs. And I think both are important. But I think over the years, making sure that all of the senior individuals are sort of participating in those mentorship sponsorship programs, giving younger people sort of the opportunity to learn from someone else about their career. And again, sort of doing the informal mentoring. I think back to the JPMorgan culture, I think it's just very endemic there. Someone reaches out to have a cup of coffee with you. You go do that. And it's just sort of something that's expected and something that sort of I grew up with, if you will. And so certainly something that I, again, take very seriously.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was a little bit of a generalization, probably. But I think what I meant by that was if women tend to stick to, because I think often earlier in their career, and probably I did the same thing early on that you stick to sort of the women's network that you develop, right? And there's a lot of sort of women's networking events. I'll speak for financial services specifically. If you only stick to that network, there's still a lot fewer women in sort of banking or pick many industries, right, than there are men. And so that limits kind of that network overall. And so I think like important that you're spending time with people across the organization, picking mentors across the organization, networking across the organization to make sure that you're developing the same robust network, that sort of some of your male colleagues would already be doing.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely Sure, but I also think it's much more fragmented, obviously, than the US market with each different country with its own rules and regulations and, you know, some sort of more nationalist policies than others. And I think that just has an impact on their ability to kind of dominate. And we're talking about Europe as if it's one thing. But it's not. It's not. So you're saying,”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More service oriented, and I think, again, you don't have the same, I think a lot of countries in Europe are looking to put in place policies to better incentivize some of the technological development, but I mean, you don't have a Bay Area type. Right. I mean, you have little pockets of that kind of concept, right? Where you have sort of this ecosystem coming together to disrupt and innovate and support new technology, but there's nothing as sort of big as the Bay Area in Europe.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Global manufacturing, and so that's had a bigger impact, I think, on Germany with those manufacturers operating globally. So those are some of the things that I would point to. And there's just never been the same labor productivity across Europe as there has been in the US. And quite frankly, just the support for innovation and new technology. And I think that just had a big impact back to Germany's heavily manufacturing base, right? The US probably less so.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm also not an expert on politics, so I'm not going to comment on that because I think there's something to be said there. But what I would say from sort of a structural perspective is I think probably one of the bigger differences today is demographics. We're kind of working age population in Europe is declining. I think it's still growing modestly in the US, and obviously that will turn in the U.S. at some point in time. But so that has been sort of one issue in Europe. I think the post COVID recovery in Europe was a lot more challenging primarily because of the Russia-Ukraine war and sort of the energy crisis that they faced given a lot of their energy was coming from our energy supply was coming from Russia. So that had a very different impact in Europe than it did in the US overall. If you look at Germany, obviously, the largest economy in Europe, it's very still sort of heavily manufacturing-based, higher interest rates have really had hurt manufacturers.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tend to be a little bit more volatile than the US. It's also because they are a lot smaller, right? In terms of just the total volume, the investor base that sort of supports those markets all around. And so that's one of the major differences. What I would say is for larger global companies having access to that European market has been quite advantageous both from a capacity perspective if they were running up against capacity constraints for a very frequent issuer obviously in the US. And two, just from a cost of funding perspective. So over the last several years, given the divergence in interest rates between the US and Europe, for many companies it's actually been cheaper to issue bonds or access the debt markets in Europe than it has been in the US, right? US interest rates were higher. So that's obviously just a great alternative, right, for companies when they need to access enormous amounts of capital.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so a couple things I would say that just one in terms of how we think about covering companies in DECON Archives. In the U.S., we're organized by industry team in Europe for obvious reasons. We're organized by country team, given language differences. So that, again, was something that I very much enjoyed, was sitting back to NDCM or in the trading floor environment. I would have my UK team over here, my Germany team, my Italy team. So everyone speaking different languages. I kept thinking I was going to learn five languages by Osmosis. That did not work, so unfortunately that's not the case. But that was a great experience overall. The European debt capital markets are”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different priorities, different experience and skill sets. So that again is sort of the most fun part of my job is being able to interact with all those founders and hear about sort of the technology to come.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I would say that is one of the best parts of my job is meeting with founders all day long and really obviously hearing about their businesses and what they are doing to kind of disrupt industries, new technologies. And that is extraordinarily rewarding in terms of hearing about that and how we can help support that growth overall. It is very different meeting with, again, kind of back to my earlier background. Spending time in debt capital markets, you're basically covering Fortune 500 companies. It's varied, which is its own unique circumstances, and those companies have their own challenges, but it's very different speaking to the treasurer CFO or CEO of Fortune 500 company than a founder. Right? Like there's just it's a very different.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would just say it's not as if we weren't banking companies in each of those industries before. It's simply that we did not have dedicated bankers that only did that, right? So back to this is why we very much believe, and it's been proven out in terms of the growth that we've seen and sort of the specialized industries business. So we sort of focus in on the sectors.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Excuse me, doing that since, you know, JP Moran sort of was founded. So the government business are not for profit healthcare, higher ed, and nonprofit business, again, two very mature businesses. We also have, you know, beverage, food, and ag, our MC business supporting some of the subsidiaries, media, communications and digital infrastructure, very hot sector right now in terms of the huge need for data centers and capital for data centers overall. The innovation economy business, again, as I mentioned, sort of part of all that. So those are some examples of the industries that fall within that remit. So again, when we first started specialized industries, I'm not going to remember the exact number, but we probably had five industries within that, right? And so we just continued to build out that dedicated expertise over the course of the past several years, which we've just found great success in.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say the portfolio is widened in the sense that we've continued to add various industries. So specialized industries, I think I mentioned before, it's 19 different industries. Give us some examples. Yeah. So that spans a very wide remit. So some of our very mature businesses, for instance, are government business, supporting states and municipalities and school districts across the country. We've been”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So clearly, you know, just talking about deep-seeks specifically, obviously just a huge impact on the equity markets, as you saw a lot of some of the larger names trading down significantly. We did see a rebound sort of the following day, which was beneficial. I do think AI is obviously going to continue to be a big story over the course of 2025. There's also just a tremendous amount of capital that needs to be raised to kind of support that industry overall. And so I do think back to sort of the comments about sort of stable macroeconomic backdrop, rates declining, all of that will be supportive of the broader IPO market and the ability to access those markets. Yes, we're going to kind of continue to see volatility with some of these surprises, like the deep sake example, but it hasn't really changed our view, our very constructive view on the market going forward.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, there's just a ton of supply that's built up over the past couple years as companies have stayed private longer and waiting for a better window to access that IPO market.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we are definitely optimistic on the IPO market this year. And I think even, you know, in 2024, saw a significant uptick in issuance versus 2023. Obviously, we were coming off a low base, but we saw about $33 billion in IPO volume in 2024. We think that that could double this year. You know, just given, I think, a stable backdrop, more kind of confidence all around the markets. We've also just seen a more stable US economy. Obviously, so far, you know, knock on wood feels like we sort of took a soft landing right in the US. We now have rates on the decline, which is supportive of the IPO market. We'll sort of see if that, you know, how that kind of plays out over the course of the year. And then I think, you know, the expectation of sort of double digit earnings growth in the coming year is also very supportive of the equity market. So we do think you're going to see a lot more activity in the IAPO market this year.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, absolutely. And again, we're finding great traction because there is so much, obviously as we all are well aware, economies and companies operate in such a global fashion today that a company sitting in Europe obviously has, generally speaking, plans to expand in other parts of the globe, the US being a huge market, particularly across tech and consumer-facing businesses, etc. So that connectivity is important.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hundreds of years. And we've been in Europe and Asia for hundreds of years from an investment banking perspective hundreds of years is maybe a strong word. But for many, many, many decades from an investment banking perspective. But the build out of the commercial banks supporting smaller sized companies in those markets is newer seven or eight years ago.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would say for our commercial banking business, so let me separate this out a moment. So again, the commercial banking business of the US is serving U.S. headquarter companies, but when they have a European sub or an Asian sub, that clearly is a smaller percentage of the company's overall revenue. So a smaller percentage of like the revenue that we would earn as well. But we're supporting them globally. The commercial banking sort of build out in Europe and Asia for bankers on the ground supporting European and Asian headquarter companies is a newer effort, newer over the past seven or eight years. So it's not as robust in terms of our robust is the wrong word. It's not as far along, right? I mean, you clearly us.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So I would say from a commercial banking perspective, we definitely support companies globally. And I do think that's, again, one of JP Morgan's competitive advantages as earlier stage companies are looking to expand internationally. We can support them across basically any market they're going to across both AMEA and APAC. So yes, we support companies there. And then we have teams on the ground in Europe and Asia, et cetera, that are supporting early stage companies that are headquarters in Europe and APAC. And then their expansion into the US. So kind of doing it both ways, inbound and outbound. And again, I think that that's something that with our long history of operating in these various jurisdictions, helping to advise companies on sort of the right strategy as they think about those international”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, when you look at, again, kind of depends on the industry, but when you look at the innovation economy business and kind of where some of the newer markets are from a VC funding perspective, you are seeing a lot of growth in the Phillies of the world, the DCs of the world, you know, San Diego. I mean, certainly there's still like a huge concentration in kind of the Bay Area and then kind of New York Boston area. But there are cities. Miami is a good example for our healthcare business. Nashville is exploded over the past several years. So again, depending on the industry, it depends on sort of where our concentration of bankers are. But, you know, back to that's why we are in 125 cities across the country.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Well, so I would just say today our commercial banking business is in the 85, you know, fastest growing top sort of MSAs across the country. We have 125 offices across the country, 2,000 plus bankers across the country. A big part of that expansion over really the last decade has been sort of California and the West Coast overall, where we prior to the WAMU acquisition didn't have a ton of sort of like retail presence and or sort of boots on the ground there. So that's accounted for a lot of that geographic expansion, as well as expansion into the southeast and sort of other states in the west. Obviously sort of moving from what historically decades and decades ago was more of a kind of east coast dominated business. And that's what's accounted for a lot of the growth within the business as a whole.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of said, What are we missing, right? In that very early stage in terms of our capabilities, like let's skip that part where they leave the JPMorgan sort of franchise, right? And really what we were missing was sort of a very simplified treasury, what we call treasury kind of payments bundle for companies to manage working capital, a simple digital platform for earlier stage companies and a venture debt capability. And that's what we really built out sort of from kind of 2017-2018 over the course of the past several years so that we had best in class capabilities both for early stage companies as well as late stage companies where everybody thinks about JP Morgan as serving later stage.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were very good in terms of our capabilities at serving, let's call it kind of Siri C and beyond, right? And when I came into this role, we very much noticed that a founder, right, and for their company would walk into a chase branch. They'd open a bank account. And then they would quickly leave that chase branch and move to one of our competitors who were very good at serving early stage, high growth early stage VC-backed companies. And then they'd come back to us at sort of Series C, right? Generalization. But so when I came into this role.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, sort of a responsibility, right, for us to serve those businesses. I think on the innovation economy side, just back to how, I mean, when you look at the disruption going on across every industry today and the innovation, JP Morgan clearly wants to be there to support those founders with sort of the next innovative idea. And I always like to point to the fact that, you know, we've been serving innovative companies literally for over 200 years when you look back at our history, right? We supported Thomas Edison in the invention of the light bulb, the railroads, the automobile, like those were disruptors at that time. But I think on the innovation economy business specifically, when we first started, I'll give you a little history of the business. When we first sort of started a dedicated focus, so we had always served early stage tech companies in the commercial bank, but just by sort of a local banker that didn't have any expertise in tech, right, that cover all industries. So back in 2016, 2017, we put in place sort of a dedicated team of bankers. At that point in time, I would say we primarily”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“absolutely because I think and I'll again kind of focus on two segments if you will kind of just the broader commercial banking business and then the innovation economy business specifically when you think about the broader commercial banking business right so not just high growth VC backed companies but small businesses overall right there are 300,000 you know small businesses across across the country that represent 13 trillion in revenues and employment people right so it is a massive part of the economy overall that we very much want to serve and we've been expanding that business quite substantially mainly through sort of geographic expansion over the course of the last several years we serve you know 32 000 middle market companies today across our commercial banks so certainly again there's back to a lot that we want to do and can do to support small business as kind of an engine of the economy overall that we very much think is a is a there's an opportunity there for us but it's”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What sort of criteria do you use? Sure. So, A, I think about it as quite as a pyramid. So there is a lot that we can do for companies across all stages of their life cycle. But when you're talking about the very earliest stages back to, they have fairly simplistic needs, right? And so we want to be able to bank and can bank as many of those companies as possible, assuming that we don't find anything from a reputational risk perspective or something in an industry that we think is challenging. But I think, again, becoming their primary operating bank, helping them optimize their working capital is sort of like the biggest challenge that these”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, absolutely. So, again, the whole purpose of having a partner like JP Morgan is that, A, we can sort of help the companies think through what the optimal capital structure is and back to sort of the point of where sort of product agnostic, depending on what the company choose to do. Most of these companies that are high growth, VC-backed in what we call the Innovation Economy business tend to still be pre-profit, right? They're growing really rapidly. They're throwing everything back into the business in order to achieve scale. So for the most part, their use of debt is quite small, usually some kind of small venture debt component. And we really want to work with those companies to think about when is the right time to put debt in their capital structure, depending again on where they are and sort of that life cycle and depending on sort of what their cash burn looks like, how close they are to the next capital raise, what is the likelihood that they're actually going to be able to raise the next round of capital. So it is a combination of both, but again, the majority of their capital structure is definitively going to be equity.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does again, when you see that certainly at the sort of preceding seed stage. But I would say it's still a minority, right, of the larger companies within the innovation company”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would say again, it would vary significantly depending on the industries that we're talking about. But if just we focus on the innovation economy business specifically, the vast majority of those are going to be VC-backed. As I mentioned, of course, sort of the crossover, if you will, between growth of equity and VC, the lines continue to get blurred. But I would say about 20-ish percent of the business is sort of PE backed and the rest is VC backed, just broad numbers”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generally speaking, and our objective is to really become the company's primary operating bank and trusted advisor from the very beginning, right? And so as an example of that, we now have a startup banking team that actually covers companies at pre-seed and seed stage. So oftentimes could be before they've even raised an institutional round of capital. And at that point in time, their needs are very sort of simple, if you will, right? They need a bank account. They need to pay their employees. They need to have a way to sort of collect funds. They may need a credit card, just very simple banking needs. And then obviously as the companies continue to grow, those needs become more complex over time, including the need to either raise additional capital, whether that be from a venture capital fund or whoever that may be coming from, they may need some debt financing and sort of on and on and on in terms of what they ultimately need to achieve their objectives and kind of become the company that they want to become.”
2025-02-27 · Masters in Business · JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source