Bulge bracket investment banks in India are seeing top-level changes, as churn in the industry shift gears, amid busy deal season.

The latest is the appointment of Kaku Nakhate by Bank of America Merrill Lynch on Thursday to become its country head. She will replace Kevan Watts, who plans to retire later this year “after ensuring a smooth transition of the leadership position”, the bank said, in a statement.

Nakhate, 43, will report to Brian Brille, president, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Asia Pacific.

Nakhate is returning to BofA-Merrill Lynch from J P Morgan India, where she was vice-chairman. It was only in April last that Nakhate had joined JP Morgan with a team from BofA-Merrill Lynch. Prior to that, she held several senior positions in global markets and equities at DSP Merrill Lynch, where she worked for more than 18 years.

BofA-Merrill Lynch has also re-hired Avinash Gupta, co-head of equity sales in India at JP Morgan.

“We have an exceptionally strong franchise in India with tremendous opportunities across all of our businesses,” said Brian Brille, president, BofA-Merrill Lynch, Asia Pacific.

A spokesperson at JP Morgan, said, “Manish Prasad, co-head of equity sales for India at the firm, will replace Nakhate.”

There have been a slew of top-level movements across the iBanking industry in recent times. Early this week, Macquarie Capital, the investment advisory and financial services arm of Australia-based iBanking major Macquarie Group, announced the appointment of Gaurav Gupta as head of its India business.

Gupta joined from Nomura, where he was head of its telecommunications, media and financial services business in India. Similarly, Citigroup Global Markets India recently announced nine top-level hires across its equities sales and execution business including Keshav Sanghi, who joined the firm from Reliance Equities. Sanghi, who was CEO at Reliance Equities, joined as managing director and deputy head of equities, India.

Richard Macfarlance joined MD and execution services at Citi from UBS, where he was head of Asia Pacific sales trading and head of European sales. Vandana Luthra joined Citi as MD, India equity sales from Merrill Lynch and Chandra Sekaran joined the US major from Reliance Equities.

Abhijit Attavar from ABN AMRO and Andres Sutcliffe from Nomura also had joined Citi, while Abhinav Khanna and Suveer Chainani came from Macquarie.