JP Morgan says needs to hire to grab top M&A spot

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the No. 2 advisor worldwide on mergers, needs to boost hiring if it is to displace Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) from the top, the chairman of mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan said on Tuesday.

"In a sense, sometimes you are limited by the amount of professionals you have. There are only so many hours in a day, and our people are working extremely hard, so we are always looking to add resources," Dennis Hersch said when asked how JP Morgan could make its way to the top.

Speaking at the Reuters Investment Banking Summit in New York, Hersch also said JPMorgan cost controls would not be a deterrent to hiring "quality bankers."

JP Morgan has the No. 2 advisory ranking worldwide so far this year, with $713.3 billion of transactions, research firm Dealogic said last month.

The No. 3 U.S. bank hired Hersch as the head of its M&A group in October 2005 from the law firm of Davis, Polk & Wardwell.

"Goldman is a fabulous institution. They've got a great network of experienced bankers who've been around for a long time," Hersch said.

"There ain't nothing terrible about being No. 2 to Goldman Sachs. I would like to be No. 1 and I think we will one day."

Despite its strong market position, the bank has recently suffered some high-level departures.

Rob Kindler, its former global head of M&A, joined Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) as a vice chairman earlier this year and Bernard Taylor, the former vice chairman of JP Morgan's investment bank, left to head a boutique firm which has since been acquired by Evercore (EVR.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Hersch said the bank had been able to quickly replace departing bankers.

He said big players like JP Morgan were not threatened by the growing number of boutique merger advisory players, adding the number of deals done by the large banks were far higher.

"The big firms like ourselves are going to bang it out every single week," Hersch said.

"We had $1.4 billion of revenue in the last quarter. We're more profitable than any institution in our space," he added.