The head of the firm's Asia operations was previously president of a China-based wealth management group.

Technology firm Two Sigma, which serves the data needs of businesses such as investment managers, has appointed Kenny Lam as head of Asia Pacific and chief executive of the company's Hong Kong entity, Two Sigma Asia Pacific.

Lam previously served as group president of Noah Holdings Limited, a wealth and asset management service provider in China. Prior to Noah, Lam was a global senior partner at McKinsey & Co based in Hong Kong, and he worked at the law firm Shearman & Sterling in New York and Hong Kong. He received his law degree from Oxford University and a BS in finance from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Two Sigma, which has offices in Hong Kong and Tokyo, and plans to expand its office in Shanghai in 2019, was founded in 2001 by co-chairmen David Siegel and John Overdeck. Its clients come from investment management, insurance, securities, private investments and venture capital.

Among other developments, in May last year Two Sigma - described in a Bloomberg article as a "quantiative hedge fund" - invested in a startup that is trying to solve data headaches for financial firms. The New York-based firm took a minority stake in Crux Informatics, a startup focused on making big data tidier and easier for customers to use.