Indosuez WM poaches from HSBC
Indosuez Wealth Management, the global wealth management brand of Crédit Agricole Group, has appointed Alfred Low as head of North Asia market and strategic partnerships for the bank’s Singapore branch, starting 1 September 2021.
Based in Singapore, Low joins Indosuez after holding senior management and advisory roles covering North Asia clients at HSBC Private Bank, Credit Suisse Private Bank, UBS Wealth Management and Citigroup Private Bank. Before banking, he held various functions with the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore.
DWS hires head of Apac client coverage
Based in Hong Kong, Vanessa Wang will become head of client coverage Apac from 1 September. Wang joins from Amundi and will lead all coverage teams of DWS in Asia Pacific, providing investment solutions to institutional and wholesale clients and partners. She will report to Dirk Goergen, head of DWS’s client coverage division and member of the executive board of DWS Group, who is based in Frankfurt.
Wang has 20 years of financial sector experience, starting her career at Mercer where she spent 15 years advising and working on retirement issues before leading the business division itself as partner and Asia head of the retirement, risk and finance. She later joined Citigroup as a managing director and Asia Pacific head of pensions, where she worked across various Citi markets and securities services teams.
Wang was with Amundi since 2016, employed as senior managing director and head of institutional business in the US, and head of institutional business in North Asia. In both roles, she was a member of Amundi’s executive committee, leading the institutional team to advise central banks, development banks, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and companies.
UBS veteran joins HSBC
HSBC has appointed Stefan Lecher as regional head of investments and wealth solutions (IWS), Asia Pacific, with effect from 3 October 2021. He will be based in Hong Kong, reporting to Lavanya Chari, global head IWS. He will lead HSBC’s investments and wealth solutions team in Asia, which covers global private banking and wealth and personal banking.
Lecher joins from UBS, where he has held several senior roles in global wealth management and asset management over the past 17 years, most recently as Apac head CIO for global investment management.
Schroders builds Asia sustainability team
Following the establishment of its Regional Centre of Excellence for Sustainability (CoES) in Singapore, Schroders Singapore has hired Mervyn Tang to be head of sustainability strategy, Apac, effective on 27 July. He will initially be based in Hong Kong before relocating to Singapore at the end of the year.
In this role, Tang will lead the CoES and build on Schroders’ sustainable investment proposition with clients across Asia Pacific, leveraging on Schroders’ proprietary ESG research and tools, including a recently announced partnership with Oxford Sciences Innovation and Natural Capital Research.
Tang, who was previously at Fitch Ratings, will report locally to Roy Diao, head of Asian fixed income, and Lily Choh, country head of Singapore, with a functional reporting line to Hannah Simons, head of sustainability strategy, in London.
At the same time, Schroders has appointed Wong Dan Chi as head of ESG integration, Asia Pacific. Wong will work with the heads of the various Asia Pacific investment desks to drive further integration of Schroders’ proprietary sustainability research and tools into the overall investment processes. He will report to Stephanie Chang, head of ESG integration, in London.
The team also comprises a sustainable equity analyst, and Schroders will add another Apac Sustainability specialist by year-end, to complete the plan for a team of four ESG-dedicated specialists. The Singapore-based CoES team will form part of Schroders’ global sustainability team of around 20 specialists, led by global head of sustainable investment Andy Howard.
Credit Suisse PB bolsters Singapore business
Shirley Law has been named market leader for Singapore at the Swiss firms’ private banking unit, as Credit Suisse continues to expand its operations in Asia.
Singapore market group head Dominique Boer.
Law has two decades of wealth management experience and she first joined Credit Suisse in 2013 as a team leader. Previously, she was a senior banker at UBS for eight years covering Asian markets, including Greater China.
She reports to Singapore market group head Dominique Boer, and reporting to Law will be three newly appointed team leaders, Kent Choi, Siang Jin Foo and Luke Hui. Foo and Hui will join Credit Suisse later this month from HSBC and Bank of Singapore, respectively.
Citi PB strengthens family office business
Jonathan Gan has joined Citi Private Bank as South Asia head of the private capital group, based in Singapore.
Gan reports to Citi Private Capital Group’s Apac head Bernie Wai and Citi PB chairman and South Asia head Lee Lung-Nien.
Gan has 16 years of deal experience in the US, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia across equity and debt capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, leveraged acquisition financing, pre-IPO/mezzanine fundraising and syndicated loans. He was most recently at HSBC where he spent the last 10 years in the corporate bank.
BNY Mellon IM appoints head of intermediary for Southeast Asia
BNY Mellon Investment Management announced the appointment of Paul Liu as head of intermediary, South East Asia. In this newly created role, Liu will be responsible for developing and driving the intermediary strategy in the region. Based in Singapore, he will focus on increasing awareness of BNY Mellon IM’s specialist investment firms and growing assets among private banks, family offices, fintech firms and strategic partnerships.
Liu has held similar roles at other asset managers in the region, including as head of wholesale at Lombard Odier Investment Managers’ for Asia ex Japan, covering private bank and family offices in China, Hong Kong and South East Asia.
Prior to this, he spent five years as head of retail sales for UOB Asset Management where he led a team focusing on the intermediary channels in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and China. Most recently Liu was a sales director at Guotai Junan International Asset Management Singapore, responsible for the firm’s overall distribution strategy in Asia Pacific across both institutional and intermediary markets.
JPMAM appoints Apac head of data science
As part of JP Morgan Asset Management’s (JPMAM) investment in technology and digital capabilities, the firm has made Lee Bray Apac head of data science. In this newly created role, he will continue as Apac head of equity trading and be based in Hong Kong.
Bray’s expanded responsibilities will include building a data science team within the region to help JPMAM trengthen its investment platform and to accelerate innovations in machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language processing. Utilizing data science, the new team will collaborate with regional and global business units within JPMAM to help drive efficiencies and growth, develop tools for clients and enable innovation, such as contributing to the analysis of Asian ESG data sets to enhance JPMAM’s ESG proprietary scoring framework, which is currently in development.
An employee of JP Morgan for two decades, Bray has extensive experience in the technological evolution of trading techniques through quantitative approaches to create a systematic trading environment.
Fidelity finds new head of investments, Japan
Fidelity International has hired Miyuki Kashima as head of investments, Japan, based in Tokyo.
In this expanded role, Kashima will lead Japan based investment team’s capability to bring the US firm’s cross-asset class investment products closer to Japanese clients and further integrate Fidelity’s sustainable investing approach in its Japanese portfolios. Kashima will report to Paras Anand, CIO Asia Pacific.
She was most recently head of Japanese equity investment at BNY Mellon, Japan, and has about 30 years of experience in leading investment teams and managing equity portfolios at several top international investment houses including BNY Mellon, ING and Merrill Lynch Asset Management (now Blackrock).
Takashi Maruyama, Fidelity’s previous head of equities, Japan, will take on a new role as senior advisor and will support the overall business development of Fidelity’s Japan business.
