Business is never just about the deal, says Morgan Stanley's de Sequeira

"Grow the business, expand the pie and connect with the client for the long term because it's never about a one-off"

Sorry, I’m running 10 minutes late,” the message flashes on my handphone. Its sender, Aisha de Sequeira, who arrived from New York City around a decade ago to run Morgan Stanley, has raised some $20 billion of capital for clients in India and provided advisory services for over $70 billion in M&A deals. Those include investments by Nippon Life into Reliance Life and Reliance Asset Management, the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, and more recently, the first REIT deal for the Blackstone Group-backed Embassy Office Parks. She’s also fast become the face of the storied American investment banking