The Switzerland-headquartered bank hired from a rival and has named its new private banking head for Japan.

(This item first was published here late yesterday and is repeated.)

Credit Suisse has hired former UBS head of its ultra high net worth business in Japan to replace Masahide Ohashi as managing director and head of private banking for Japan, closing in on its 2018 objective to spread its Japanese private banking momentum to its newly established Asia-Pacific business.

Tsuneaki Hirao will be based in Tokyo and report to Alex Wade, head of developed and emerging Asia private banking for Asia-Pacific, as well as Martin Keeble, chief executive officer, Japan, the bank said in a statement yesterday.

Credit Suisse aims to make use of Hirao’s 25 years of senior level private banking experience, of which ten were spent spearheading UBS’s wealth management office in Osaka, Japan. Prior to his UBS stint, Hirao was managing director, market head of Citi Private Bank in Tokyo.

Speaking on the bank’s commitment to Japan amid geographic expansion, Keeble highlighted Hirao’s breadth and depth of experience in private banking in the country and confirmed the group’s take on Japan’s HNW wealth as a growth engine for its franchise.

“With the largest high-net-worth wealth pool in Asia, Japan is one of our priority markets in the region and a particularly important domestic market for our private banking business,” he said.

Japan hasn't been an easy market for foreign wealth managers to penetrate, being a market dominated by domestic players and with a culture that has tended to favour low-risk savings products. Under a more reformist administration led by Shinzo Abe, who has made a point of encouraging supply-side reform, there is more hope, perhaps, that the climate for foreign banks may become easier.

In Credit Suisse's case, the Zurich-listed lender has reported a compounded annual growth rate over 50 per cent in AuM for its Japan private banking business.

Hirao’s hire is the latest of no less than 850 new heads in over 12 months to June, of whom 100 are relationship managers in Asia-acific.

Since October last year, the bank has formed a new Asia-acific division and is deploying headcount in emerging markets, where it wants to replicate the model it holds in other emerging markets

In June, the firm launched its Thailand wealth management business with a team of five relationship managers  to be led by EFG Bank Singapore’s Khun Thippa Praneeprachachon to serve as executive director and expert relationship manager.

In July, it enrolled Carole Cheung market group head Philippines from BNP Paribas Wealth Management, and Edwin Lim market group head Taiwan from JP Morgan  Private Bank.

The APAC business has also appointed new managers, with Michael Wachtel coming in as senior advisor private banking Australia and Donald Rice as head of Alternative Investments, private banking for Asia-Pacific.