A renewed surge in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and private equity deals in India is leading to a churn of senior personnel within the investment banking community.

Ace investment banker V Anantharaman, known for having structured many deals for the Tata group, is set to return to Standard Chartered Bank (StanChart) as head of its corporate finance and advisory business.

The 46-year-old will also help the UK-based bank to build its equity capital markets team and is likely to join from October. Mr Ananthraman had left StanChart in 2006 for Credit Suisse as its managing director and was pivotal in setting up its M&A team.

StanChart has also hired Ratnesh Kumar, formerly the head of research at Anand Rathi Securities, to head its equity broking unit.

In other changes within StanChart, Prahlad Shantigram, the global M&A head, is learnt to be moving to Singapore. US-based Goldman Sachs too may lose one of its senior bankers, with Sunil Sanghai said to be joining HSBC as its MD, global banking (corporate and investment banking).

Industry watchers say the attrition level in investment banking has risen faster compared to the number of deals struck.

In some cases, deal makers are moving on to better career prospects, while in other cases, more so among private equity fund managers, people are starting on their own.

PR Srinivasan has quit Citigroup Venture Capital International as its managing director after a eight-year stint with the US-based private equity firm, to start his own private equity fund.

It is learnt that Mr Srinivasan, who has been associated with the PE industry for last 18 years, will be partnering another industry veteran to launch a $400 million growth fund targeting companies focused on the domestic market. He is currently on gardening leave and will call it a day at CVCI early next month.

Mr Srinivasan joins over half-a-dozen top-notch fund managers in large PE funds who have recently started on their own. His former colleague Ajay Relan, along with his friends, has started CX Partners which has raised over $500 million from global investors. Home-grown ICICI Ventures too has seen many check-outs. Renuka Ramnath and Jayanta Banerjee, among others, have floated their own independent funds.

M&A activity involving Indian companies witnessed an upsurge in the April-June quarter. While the deal count of 155 was similar to that of April-June 2009, the total deal value reached $16.9 billion, almost 400% higher than the same period last year, said the latest Ernst &Young Transactions report.