Firms such as Barclays and Standard Chartered, among others, made prominent appointments last month in a brisk start to the year for moves.

Morningstar Investment Management Asia appointed Manfred Wong as director, portfolio specialist, responsible for teams in Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China. He is based in Hong Kong. Wong previously worked at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, where he was a research analyst focusing on sourcing and monitoring hedge fund investments for the firm's fund-of-hedge funds business. Before Mesirow, Wong held senior roles at Mercer, AMP Capital and Macquarie. 

AXA Investment Managers appointed Masanori Tanabe as external director and chairman in Japan as part of its growth drive in the country. Tanabe, who joined AXA Life Japan and AXA General Insurance Japan last year as director and chairman, spent 30 years in leadership roles at the Bank of Japan between 1975 and 2005. He has also served as governor of the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan. He is based in Tokyo for the newly-created role.

Schroders, the UK-listed asset management and private banking house, confirmed the departure of a senior Singapore-based manager. Gerald Koh, director of private bank distribution in Singapore, is to leave the firm in March.

ABN AMRO’s private bank appointed former ANZ senior executive Gracelyn Ho as chief commercial officer for Asia and the Middle East. Ho’s role covers strategy, business development as well as marketing and communications. She previously was head of wealth solutions for Asia at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, overseeing the bank's various wealth solution segments in Asia. Before joining ANZ, she was at Morgan Stanley for 10 years, where in her last role she was head of capital markets, private wealth management for Asia.

A former managing director at the private banking arm of Credit Suisse in Hong Kong moved to JP Morgan, where she works in the private bank team covering China. Grace Lin left the Zurich-listed lender in November last year. She had worked at Credit Suisse from August 2010 to November 2015. Previously, Lin worked at HSBC Private Bank for eight months, and prior to that was at UBS for 10 years.

Andrew Géczy, the chief executive for international and institutional banking at Melbourne-headquartered ANZ, left after two and a half years at the group. Géczy, who joined ANZ in 2013, previously held senior executive roles at Lloyds Banking Group and Citigroup.

EFA Group, the Singapore-headquartered asset manager specialising in private credit, appointed Jacques-Olivier Thomann as senior advisor. Thomann previously worked at BNP Paribas as general manager of the Switzerland branch, a post he held from 2009. He was responsible for structured finance, which includes among other areas, commodity finance, commodity structured finance, export finance, project finance and shipping. Before taking over those responsibilities, he held various senior positions within the bank in Geneva, Singapore and Paris, including as global head of commodity finance.

Shinsuke Takarada joined Nissay Asset Management, a joint venture partner of investment house RWC Partners, as a senior portfolio manager in Tokyo. Takarada has the specific role of working on the corporate engagement-focused RWC Nissay Japan Fund and the Dublin-domiciled Japanese Stewardship Fund. Previously, Takarada worked at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, specialising in environmental, social and governance issues. Prior to that, he worked for Dainippon Printing as a consultant on corporate social responsibility management.

Union Bancaire Privée saw the exit of Ron Lee, Asian head of investment services. He has been based in Singapore. Lee joined the firm in 2011, having previously worked at rival Swiss banking firm Lombard Odier, where he worked from 2007.

Credit Suisse appointed DBS Wealth Management’s former chief operating officer to the role of team leader. Kelvin Ho reports to Rickie Chan, who is market leader for Greater China at the Zurich-listed bank.

AMP Capital appointed Andrea McElhinney as investment director in its social and aged care infrastructure team, based in Sydney. McElhinney took responsibility for the day-to-day portfolio management of AMP Capital’s Community Infrastructure Fund, which includes portfolio optimisation, client interaction and investment activities. She took the role from Anne Mizzi, who retains overall accountability for the fund.

Pictet Asset Management hired Niall Quinn as its new global head of institutional business (excluding Japan), replacing Christoph Lanter who retired after 17 years with the firm. Quinn was most recently managing director of Eaton Vance Management International, responsible for all operations outside North America, with a focus on institutional business development.

Standard Chartered’s private bank announced a raft of top-level appointments for the Asia-Pacific region. Stephen Richards Evans was named market head, Indonesia, a role in addition to his position as global head for the ultra high net worth proposition. He has held his current role since May last year and works with Peter Kok, regional head, ASEAN and South Asia. Gary Goh, who joined Standard Chartered in December last year, was named market head for Singapore, and reports to Kok. He has 18 years’ experience in global private banking and was most recently desk head for the Chinese entrepreneur segment at UBS. Kimmis Pun, who most recently was managing director of the China market for BNP Paribas and who joined Standard Chartered last December, was made market head for Greater China. He reports to Kok.

Huddleston Jones, the Singapore-headquartered executive search firm specialising in wealth management, made a raft of senior appointments. In a newly-created role, Peter Henke joined as managing director and regional head of asset management. Henke has an extensive background within the sector in Asia, based in Singapore and Japan.

Huddleston Jones also hired in the compliance and risk sector. Katherine Ho joined from Tom Roche & Associates as executive director and regional head of treasury and risk management, in addition to Vivien Lai, who will lead the compliance focus in the Asia-Pacific region. Amod Jain was hired as a director to increase support for front-office assignments within the group’s wealth management division. Jain joined mid-2015 from Carlton Senior Appointments to develop and expand communication with senior relationship managers across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East/GCC region.

The international securities business of MUFG made key changes to its senior leadership team in Asia, adding to an appointment made recently at its operations in Hong Kong.

Trent Hagland, head of Asia and chief executive, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (Hong Kong), stepped down from these positions and returned to Australia for personal reasons. Hagland was in Hong Kong in his latest role for four years and at the firm for seven years; he joined the board of directors as a non-executive director for Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (Hong Kong) and for Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (Singapore), effective 29 April. Yasutaka Suehiro, a 28-year veteran of MUFG and the current deputy CEO, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (USA), shifted to the Asia team to take on Hagland's vacated role and is based in Hong Kong.

Srinivas Siripurapu, who was head of wealth management, Southeast and South Asia, at Barclays, left the UK-listed bank. Siripurapu was appointed by the bank in August 2009 and took up the role in February 2010. He joined from UBS, where he had been head of India international Asia at the Swiss banking group. Separately, Vikram Malhotra was appointed head of sales for Singapore; he has been at the bank since 2010 and continues to head the GSAC (global South Asia community) team.  

Julius Baer  created a new division to bolster its investment management arm, bringing in a former investment chief from Pictet to lead it. The move was announced on the same day that the bank announced it had appointed a new head for its Southeast Asia business. 

The new division is called Investment Management (IM) and is led by Yves Henri Bonzon. He became a member of the bank’s executive board, reporting to Boris Collardi, chief executive. The IM division will complement the Investment Solutions Group (ISG), an existing division headed by Burkhard Varnholt. He and Bonzon are co-CIOs.

Julius Baer also appointed Torsten Linke, a former senior figure at Credit Suisse in Asia, as the head of private banking for Southeast Asia and branch manager for Singapore. David Lim, who previously held these roles, became vice chairman for Southeast Asia. Linke reports to Jimmy Lee, head of Asia-Pacific at the Zurich-listed bank.

Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (HK), part of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFG Financial, appointed Rick Mattila as managing director, international head of research. He relocated to Hong Kong. Mattila worked for the past five years driving MUFG’s businesses in Europe and North America. He spent 15 years covering investment-grade and high-yield credit in Europe. Prior to joining MUFG in 2010, he held positions at Merrill Lynch Bank of America and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

In Hong Kong, he reporta to Dong Nam, head of credit trading and sales, Asia, and internationally to Jim Higgins, international head of credit.

Friends Provident International, part of UK-based Aviva group, appointed Charles Barrows as managing director of FPI Hong Kong. He took over the helm from James Tan, who stepped down to pursue other interests. Barrows reports to Adrian Emery, chief executive of the business. Barrows has been with Aviva for more than 20 years. 

Lombard International hired Tammy Lu Tsui as chief executive of the Asia region. Tsui brings over 20 years of industry experience, with a focus on the high and ultra-high net worth markets. She was most recently deputy chairman in Greater China for Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group, having previously served as regional managing director of private risk at AON. In the newly-created role, Tsui is based in Hong Kong.

Sharon Loh was appointed as head of advisory, Southeast Asia for BNP Paribas Wealth Management. 

Loh previously worked at UBS Wealth Management in a similar role, based in Singapore. She has also worked for Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

VP Bank (Singapore), part of Liechtenstein-headquartered VP Bank, appointed former Pictet senior manager Sylvain Gysler to the post of head of intermediaries. Previously, Gysler was head of the external asset managers’ department, Asia, at Pictet. In that role, he ran and developed a portfolio of external asset managers and multi-family offices based in Hong Kong, Switzerland and Singapore; he ran a team of relationship managers in Singapore and Hong Kong.

HSBC Private Bank appointed Abdel Ben Tkhayet as regional head of sterling structured products and fixed income, currencies and commodities, ISPS Asia. Tkhayet has almost 20 years of international investment experience, joining Hong Kong/London-listed HSBC in Paris in 1997.