Lina Lim has been hired as regional head of discretionary for Asia at HSBC PB, where she will oversee the development of customised and discretionary portfolio management in the region, the bank said in a statement.
She is based in Hong Kong and reports to Abdel Ben Tkhayet and Jackie Mau, co-heads of ISPS for Asia-Pacific.
Lim joins from JP Morgan Wealth Management, where she worked for a decade in several roles, most recently heading up the institutional wealth management’s discretionary business in Asia for family offices, endowments and foundations.
Previously, she was a senior portfolio manager at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management.
In addition, HSBC has made two other investment counselling hires to cover the mainland China and Taiwan markets.
Rocky Cheung joins from DBS Private Bank to become head of investment counselling for the mainland China and Taiwan markets. Based in Hong Kong, he also reports directly to Tkhayet and Mau.
Cheung is 24-veteran of the financial industry, during which time he focused on private clients, although prior to joining DBS he helped design a derivatives trading system for the Hong Kong Futures Exchange, according to the statement.
Finally, Simon Hwang has been appointed investment counselling team head for the mainland China market and he reports to Cheung.
He has moved from Citi Private Bank, where he led the mainland China and Taiwan investment counselling team. He has 19 years of investment advisory experience, including spells at China Everbright, Ludgate Hill Investment Management and Pangu Capital, an investment firm he co-founded, according to the statement.
The ISPS team includes investment counsellors and product specialists responsible for providing financial advice to clients with a minimum of $5m in investible assets.
The three appointments were made “to support our ambitious growth plans in Asia”, according to Tkhayet, in a statement.
At the start of the year, HSBC PB brought over Cynthia Lee from JP Morgan WM to head its private wealth solutions business in North Asia, after making several senior external hires four months earlier.
Asia’s private bankers remain in an expansionary mood, despite indications that the period of rapid growth in business enjoyed during the past decade might be subsiding.
According to a recent McKinsey report, the growth rate in assets under management in Asia as a whole plunged to 5% in 2018, compared with average annual growth of 15% between 2011 and 2017. Inflows into the well-established, sophisticated money-management hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore actually fell 0.3% last year.
