STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED THIS WEEK
People moves
Bank of Singapore has appointed Celine Le Cotonnec as chief data and innovation officer. In this newly created role, Le Cotonnec will be responsible for the bank’s data strategy and drive its innovation efforts as the head of the innovation unit. She will report to Bahren Shaari, BOS’ CEO. Previously, Le Cotonnec was Axa Insurance Singapore’s chief data and innovation officer…
Axa Investment Managers has bolstered its distribution and marketing capability with six senior hires in Asia. For private banking relationships, the firm has appointed Ronald Liu as director for private banks for Asia and Marilyn Wang as private banks for Singapore. On the retail distribution front, Powell Cheung has been appointed as director for retail Asia, Miu Shui, associate director for Asia retail and Arthip Nathikanchanalab as associate director for Asia retail. Meanwhile, Wendy Loke was named as head of marketing communications for Asia-Pacific. Separately, the firm has also hired Natalia Mu as an investment specialist. She will work closely with portfolio manager William Chuang and the Axa IM Framlington equities thematics portfolio managers…
State Street Global Advisors has appointed Meaghan Victor as head of SPDR ETF Asia-Pacific distribution. Victor was previously the firm’s head of SPDR ETFs for Australia and Singapore. In her new role, her remit will include Hong Kong and Japan. She will continue to be based in Sydney, reporting to head of global SPDR ETF business Rory Tobin…
Hedge funds
After a positive year for hedge funds globally, industry performance started out 2020 in the red, but just barely, with industry posting an overall loss of -0.22%, according to an Evestment report. Managed futures funds were the best performing primary strategy last month, while activist funds were the biggest performance losers…
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has reprimanded and fined BMI Securities HK$3.7m ($480,000) for failures in complying with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) regulatory requirements. The regulator has also suspended the firm’s responsible officer, Maggie Tang, for five and a half months. In 2016, a number of BMISL’s clients subscribed for the placing shares of two Hong Kong-listed companies and subsequently transferred most or all of these shares to third parties using bought and sold notes in a series of off-exchange transactions. The off-exchange transactions, whose consideration ranged from HK$4.4 million-HK$855.9 million apiece, displayed various suspicious features, including the subscription amount for the placing shares, was incommensurate with the clients’ financial profile and the clients did not conduct any other transactions in their BMISL accounts apart from acquiring and disposing of the placing shares. The SFC found out that at the time, BMI Securities failed to implement adequate internal controls to mitigate the risk of money laundering, perform appropriate customer due diligence and conduct proper enquiries and sufficient scrutiny on suspicious transactions and consider reporting them to the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit…
