UBS Steps Up Asia Funds Business

Tom Burroughes

10 April 2018

has appointed Sebastien Chaker as sales head, a new role, of its UBS Fondcenter Hong Kong.

The team Chaker leads has offices in Hong Kong and Singapore.

As part of the change, Nicolas Huras, will move from AM's Fund Management Services (FMS) business, to become head of sales for Fondcenter in Singapore in early April. He has more than 14 years of experience in the fund industry and during his career in FMS, was responsible for helping to develop its strong presence in Southern Europe.

Chaker has more than 20 years' experience in the fund distribution and servicing space, holding senior positions with Citibank, Euroclear, Brown Brothers Harriman and Calastone. He has been promoting fund distribution services in Asia for over ten years and was most recently responsible for setting up and leading Calastone's Asia expansion.

"Through our Fondcenter platform, we have been servicing some of the leading banks and fund managers in Asia for over a decade. In conjunction with UBS's optional fund execution and custody services, UBS provides a 'one-stop-shop' solution enabling fund distributors to focus on their core strengths while reducing the costs, risks and complexities of managing an ever-growing network of third party funds and fund providers in an increasingly challenging regulatory environment,” Geoffroy de Ridder, head of UBS Fondcenter, said.

UBS said the set-up of its offering means fund distributors can tailor services to client needs by combining fund research, legal agreement management and calculation of trailer fees for over 400 fund providers with mutual funds, ETFs and hedge fund execution and custody services covering over 60,000 funds.