JPMorgan Chase has tapped longtime banker Belen Garren to lead the company’s middle market efforts across North Texas.
Garren, who’s been with the company for more than 15 years, most recently led Chase’s emerging middle market business in North Texas. The banking giant began rolling out the focus on earlier-stage middle market companies across its footprint three years ago, and Garren also helped develop strategies with the national team, she said.
“As a business, we had done a really good job focusing on the upper end of the middle market, but there was a real opportunity on what we call the emerging end of the middle market,” Garren said. “With having that focus on the emerging middle market space, we’re able to work with companies and be with them through every step of their growth.”
She took the reins as region manager across Dallas and Fort Worth for all middle market efforts at the end of the summer. Garren now leads a middle market team of about 40 bankers that work with local companies across capabilities, including domestic and global treasury, liquidity management, investment banking and capital markets, among others.
The middle market at Chase generally includes companies between $20 million and $500 million in revenue, but Garren added business can vary, including working with companies that are pre-revenue. The bank works across 15 specific industry groups, including technology and health care. 
The local leader said one of the areas where Chase differentiates from other banks in the middle market space is global capabilities, especially as macro trends such as increased inflation, supply chain bottlenecks and limited workforce create challenges for local companies. Along with global research and insights, Chase also offers banking products to local middle market companies.
“We had a client recently over the past couple of weeks that came to us and said they’re based here, locally in North Texas, but they have a facility in Australia,” Garren said. “And because of supply chain disruption, they needed a line of credit there, in Australia. So our banker contacted our banker on the ground in Australia. In a matter of weeks, we were able to put together a facility for them to be able to alleviate those supply chain disruptions.”
Garren added her responsibilities on the ground in North Texas will include setting strategy for the team, ensuring the bankers have proper resources and connections, staying involved with clients and the community and getting deals done.
© 2021 American City Business Journals. All rights reserved. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 7/20/21). The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of American City Business Journals.

source