He built JPMorgan's coast-to-coast banker network. Now exec John Richert says the middle market's moment is coming.

• JPMorgan Chase sees rich upside in middle-market investment banking outside of New York City.
• Many of the mid-cap banking team's members, including its head, live and work from regional hubs.
• John Richert, the group's head, explains how he built JPMorgan's mid-cap IB business from scratch.

JPMorgan took a bet to build an investment banking machine outside Wall Street, and it tapped John Richert to do it.

Under Richert's watch, the business that serves founder-run companies with deep ties to their local economies has grown from four people to nearly 300 bankers, collectively generating more than $1 billion annually. After completing their junior analyst years — most often in New York — bankers on his team can relocate to any of the 13 offices the group operates across the country.

It's a model that challenges the traditional idea of investment banking as a strictly New York endeavor. What's far less visible is what it looks like to build and run a franchise in places like Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, or across the Southeast.

Mid-cap investment banking deals generally fall within the range of roughly $2 billion and below, with the group's sweet spot for deal transaction value of about $500 million to $1.5 billion. Under Richert, who serves as the team's head, coverage sectors have expanded to encompass industrials, consumer retail, healthcare, media and communications, and more.

Wall Street rivals have taken note. Goldman Sachs launched its Cross Markets Group in 2019 to target founder-led and mid-sized companies, and UBS stood up a middle-market effort during the pandemic, dispatching bankers to the same cities where its wealth managers operate. What's more, the pipeline between capital markets teams and wealth advisers is become more intertwined, creating lucrative referral opportunities as founders seek to invest the wealth created from major IB transactions.

Richert spoke to Business Insider from his office in Atlanta about what it's like to build a national investment-banking operation far from New York — and why he's optimistic about where the middle market is headed in the coming year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you feeling about the mid-cap M&A environment heading into next year?

I think we're pretty optimistic on 2026. We have our highest backlog sell-sides that we've ever had.

We have a lot of private equity funds that need to return capital to their LPs. They need to sell assets. You have a lot of funds that aren't going to be able to raise another fund but have a bunch of portfolio companies that they're going to need to sell. You've got aging baby boomers and founder-owned businesses that children are not wanting to take over the business.

Why does being local matter so much in your business, and how does that shape the way your team is built across the country?

A dinner, bumping into a CEO on a Saturday on the soccer field or at kids' events. Like being in the communities, commercial banking is a local business. You've got to be in front of your clients. I once had a CEO tell me, "The reason we like having you local is we like bumping into you and seeing you in the community. When you come and visit us, you're just paying a visit. You're not flying in from New York."

We don't chase fees or transactions, we chase relationships. Over time, if you do that, when that client decides that he has a transaction he needs you to work on, you've built that relationship over months and years. Local matters in our opinion.

What's the allure of working outside of New York, and how can bankers who do stay plugged in with clients?

I do think that analysts and associates should start out in New York to be in the center and the nexus of where it's happening. But then when you're tired of Manhattan or tired of commuting in from the tri-state area, there's a lot of great places you can work.

Come to New York or LA, the two big concentrations for us. Do your two years there, and then once you get promoted to associate, if you're from the Southeast or the Midwest or Texas or the West Coast, we have these offices you can go work in.

Take us back to the beginning. How did JPMorgan's mid-cap banking group start, and why was it created?

I was at Barclays when I got a call from Doug Petno, now our CEO of JPMorgan's corporate investment bank. The firm asked me to move to Atlanta when we started this business about 12 years ago. Doug's first question was: What's our investment banking market share? And it was a low single digits compared to high single digits for the overall investment bank at JPMorgan. His first question was, 'Why is that?'

I'm originally from Tennessee, so they said, "You're the southerner. Would you like to go to Atlanta?" We started in New York, Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta.

What challenges did you face as you built the business from the ground up?

We needed to find the right mix of talent who were both highly skilled and, critically, excited to help build something new and enduring in the industry — and that isn't easy. Hiring is a full time job.

We looked for individuals who saw the opportunity to innovate and grow, and who were willing to take a leap of faith with us. This endeavor was and continues to be very entrepreneurial. We are here building something brand new within JPMorgan, which is incredibly exciting but also incredibly hard work.

How is AI changing the work your bankers do today and do you think it will change who gets into banking or affect the number of jobs?

We have an internal LLM that summarizes information and makes us smarter when we talk to clients. Tasks that used to take a day to do, you can now do in an hour using AI.

But we are not doing anywhere near as much as we should be. Drafting S-1s, drafting confidential information memoranda, drafting communications — all of that we should be using AI to create efficiencies for the analysts' and associates' work.

AI will allow us to cover more clients, which requires more people. Nobody likes staying up all night writing an S1. But if you can do an S1 in six or seven hours by using AI and leave the office at 8, that's not eliminating people. It's just making it a better lifestyle business.

What part of running this business keeps you up at night?

My focus is always on ensuring our team is set up for success and that we maintain our drive for excellence.

There are myriad macro factors causing uncertainty across the market, and we are of course monitoring them all closely. Our priority is to stay agile and proactive so we can continue delivering outstanding results for our clients, no matter the environment.

How would you describe your leadership style and the culture you've built?

Lead by example. There's nothing I would ask anybody on my team to do that I have not done or would not do myself.

I tell everyone, 'This is just a job. Family comes first. Treat everyone you meet with respect.'

I'm trying to make this team the best it can be. Everyone from the top to the bottom matters. The MDs can't be successful without the analyst, and the analyst can't be successful without the MDs. Culture is not transferred over Zoom.

It's pretty easy. Just go give good advice to your clients. The rest of it will work out.