JPMorgan creates joint investment team to focus on retail

As more and more brick-and-mortar retailers are increasing their digitalization efforts, ramping up investments into ecommerce, JPMorgan has created an investment team to manage merger and acquisition deals that have become a common occurrence in the struggle between offline and online retailers. 

The announcement was made in a memo sent to the bank’s employees and reported by Reuters. The new group will be called the disruptive commerce group and will focus on helping retailers expand and consolidate their ecommerce strategies.

To keep up with consumer demands and to deal with the increased competition coming from ecommerce groups like Amazon, many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have started to invest in digitalizing their services. Another common strategy is to outright buy competitors and to integrate them into the main company’s structure.

Walmart, one of Amazon’s biggest competitors, has completed the acquisition of several ecommerce businesses including, Jet.com, ModCloth and Bonobos. However, online retailer Amazon seems to be applying the same strategy, but in the opposite direction – the company has acquired Whole Foods, pointing its focus towards the traditional brick-and-mortar segment.