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Summary Of Asia-Pacific Executive Moves - January 2020
Editorial Staff
25 February 2020
Moves for January 2020 Indosuez Wealth Management in Asia named Olivier Livenais as the chief executive of its Hong Kong Branch. He succeeded Antoine Candiotti, who retired after more than three decades with the group. Livenais oversees Indosuez’s wealth management business in Hong Kong and North Asia and reports to Omar Shokur, Indosuez’s CEO for Asia and Singapore branch manager. He has relocated to Hong Kong from France. His 20-year career with Crédit Agricole Group (of which Indosuez Wealth Management is a part) began in 2000 at the General Inspectorate. In 2007, he moved to Indosuez Wealth Management as finance, risk and strategy director.
Hong Kong-based Diginex, a financial services and advisory company working in the field of “digital assets” such as blockchain, appointed Shane Edwards as head of investment products, based in London. Prior to this, Edwards was managing director at UBS Investment Bank where he held senior posts including global head of solutions and structuring and global head of equity derivatives. His overall financial markets career spans 20 years, including experience at Deutsche Bank, RBS/ABN Amro and Macquarie Bank where he worked in various derivatives structuring and trading roles.
The former chief investment officer at Bank of Singapore, Rajeev De Mello, became managing director at Deep Learning Investments, a business based in Singapore. De Mello was the CIO at the private bank from August 2018 until January this year. Prior to this, he was head of Asian fixed income and co-head of emerging markets relative at Schroders.
Westpac named a new chairman to take over from Lindsay Maxsted. John McFarlane, who has also been named as a non-executive director, was due to take over the role in April; he started his NED role in February. Prior to this, McFarlane was chairman at Barclays in London and also chairman of TheCityUK, an industry body involved in pushing ideas about the UK’s financial services sector, currently contemplating life outside the European Union after 31 January. McFarlane has been a board director at five major financial institutions over the past 27 years. His career includes top-level roles at ANZ, Standard Chartered and Citicorp.
Fixed income specialist Ardea Investment Management appointed Dr Laura Ryan to the newly-minted role of head of research. Prior to Ardea, Dr Ryan was senior vice president (Quantitative Research) and a member of the Australian senior management team at PIMCO, manager of quantitative strategy at CBA, quantitative manager at AMP Capital Investors and a lecturer in statistics at the Australian National University.
Gerald See, formerly of UBS, joined Standard Chartered. He serves ultra-high net worth clients in Singapore, and\\ reports to Gavin Chia, market head for private banking in Singapore and Malaysia. With more than 13 years of wealth management experience, See previously worked at UBS where he was a director in the firm’s global family office and UHNW division. Before then, he was a venture capitalist focused on both early stages and pre-IPO start-ups.
Citi Private Bank appointed Christian Schuwey as head of South Asia advisory for foreign exchange, joining from UBS. Schuwey is based in Singapore and reports to Adam A Cowperthwaite, managing director and head of capital markets for Asia-Pacific. Schuwey is responsible for driving growth in the South Asia region, which includes markets such as Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Sun Life Hong Kong, an insurance firm which operates in areas including those touching on wealth management, named Steven Fong as general manager of distribution, while Martin Fortier, former chief risk officer of Sun Life Malaysia, was named as general manager for financial affairs.
Fong re-joined the firm, taking over from Belinda Au who leads a new project within the Sun Life Asia regional office. Fong leads all distribution channels including agencies and brokerages, as well as training and development of the agency force. Fong was the chief agency officer at Sun Life in 2018, where he drove agency sales growth through quality business for agency distribution.
Fortier brought more than 25 years of experience to his new role. Prior to joining Sun Life Hong Kong on 1 January, Martin was with Sun Life Malaysia, where he held various posts including chief risk officer, chief actuary, appointed actuary and chief financial management officer. He now oversees strategy development and financial affairs including finance, actuarial, risk, asset liability management, investment and trustee business.
AAM Advisory, the Singapore-based financial advice business, which is part of the UK-based wealth management group Quilter, appointed a new head of investments, Shreemati Varadarajan. Varadarajan joined from Farringdon Asset Management in Singapore where she was chief commercial and operations officer. Prior to this, she had senior roles at the financial planning firm Globaleye, ultimately becoming the group chief investment officer. Before joining Globaleye, she worked in various client management roles at both ANZ Bank and ING Vysya Bank.
Finantix, the wealth technology firm, appointed Michael Gantenbein as an account delivery director in Singapore. Gantenbein has a background in account management, software delivery, business development, team management and business process management in fintech, cloud and omni-channel technologies. Prior to joining Finantix, he was in senior roles at Flowable, Soreco and Itartis. He also has direct banking experience having served at Credit Suisse in various positions for over a decade.
Sequent, the new name for Rothschild Trust following a buyout with Rothschild & Co in February last year, hired Kevin Tay as senior partner and Asia head. Tay most recently worked at Julius Baer. Prior to that, he held senior positions at BNP Paribas Private Bank and HSBC Trustees (Singapore) Limited. Tay is a lawyer by training and spent his initial professional years at Rajah & Tann, a prominent Singapore law firm.
UBS made several senior changes to its Asia-Pacific business. Anurag Mahesh and LH Koh were appointed as co-heads for GFO APAC under the new Global Family Office setup. The Global Family Office (GFO) is an integral part of the overall APAC business and has a global reporting line to GFO and a regional reporting line to APAC. In Singapore, UBS segments are led by the following people: Patricia Quek - sector head, Singapore & Malaysia; Tian-Ong Foo - sector head, Thailand & Philippines; and Raymond Ang - sector head of Indonesia, Greater China (Singapore) and Japan International.
In the Greater China region, UBS intends to maintain its existing structure of Hong Kong, China and Taiwan International businesses. The senior positions are Adeline Chien - sector head Hong Kong Domestic & SEA (HK); Marina Lui - sector head for China (International and Domestic teams); Francis Liu - sector head Taiwan International.
UBS also named David Man as regional vice chairman for Wealth Management for Greater China region. Man, who joined the bank in 1996, reports to Amy Lo and August Hatecke, co-heads of WM APAC.
Deutsche Bank’s wealth arm appointed Siok Kuan Tham as head of wealth discretionary for emerging markets, based in Singapore. Siok Kuan Tham took over from Tuan Huynh, who became the firm’s chief investment officer for Europe a few months ago. Previously, Tham was head of fixed income at Deutsche Bank’s DWS asset-management business in Singapore, and chaired the Asian fixed income portfolio construction committee in Singapore. She holds a BA in accounting and financial analysis from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK.
Deutsche Bank Wealth Management appointed Boris Kwok as group head for North Asia, with a focus on China. Kwok reports to Kanas Chan, managing director, head of North Asia. Kwok has almost 20 years’ experience in the industry and joined from Standard Chartered, where he had served in various roles since 2002 - the most recent of which was managing director, market head, China team. In that role, he managed a team of over 25 relationship managers and team heads covering Greater China.
M&G Investments appointed Berny Lin as head of distribution, Asia ex-Japan; he joined from Eastspring Investments. Lin has more than 20 years of experience working in the asset management arena. At Eastspring, from 2011, he was chief distribution officer and chief marketing officer. From 2015, he also served on Eastspring’s Taiwan board of directors. Before that, he worked for six years at Deutsche Asset Management in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Singapore’s Golden Equator Group, the multi-family office, added Brunei to its roster of jurisdictions in which it operates. The group appointed Aziemah Abdullah as country head.
Close Brothers Asset Management appointed Sarah Keltie as senior investment business development director, having previously worked at law firm Taylor Wessing.
MLC Wealth, the Australian firm that is part of National Australia Bank, appointed Darren McKenzie as chief technology and operations officer. McKenzie joined MLC from RSA Insurance, where he was chief operating officer for the UK and international business for four years. McKenzie reports to NAB group chief technology and operations officer, Patrick Wright, and MLC’s CEO Geoff Lloyd, until MLC is legally split off from ANZ, as is scheduled. Before this role, McKenzie spent the past four years at RSA Insurance where he was COO UK & International. Prior to that he spent six years (2009-2015) as chief information officer at Banco Santander for their consumer banking businesses, based in Frankfurt.
Xen Technologies, a platform giving Asian investors the ability to tap into alternative assets such as private equity and hedge funds, appointed Kenneth Yeo as chief investment officer. Yeo joined from Azalea Asset Management, a private equity fund wholly owned by Temasek, where he was a senior director. Prior to that, he worked at Oriens Asset Management as chief investment officer, Allianz Group as investment director and at the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation as vice president.
Credit Suisse set up a new team, called Asia-Pacific Quantitative and Systematic Strategy, to expand its research advisory suite. Will Stephens, was appointed head of quantitative and systematic strategy, Asia-Pacific. He has 20 years’ experience in both the buy and sell-side as a research professional. Prior to this, Stephens was at Deutsche Bank, where he was head of “delta one strategy” and head of regional equity strategy.
Eastspring Investments, the Asian investment management arm of UK-listed Prudential plc, made two senior hires. It appointed Francis Woo as chief financial officer, based in Singapore, and Joyce Chan as head of Intermediaries and general manager of the Hong Kong office.
SCB Julius Baer, the wealth management joint venture between Siam Commercial Bank and Julius Baer, appointed Lalitphat Toranavikrai as the new CEO to replace Jiralawan Tangitvet, who left late last year after being in the post for seven months. Prior to this, Toranavikrai was head of the Private Banking and FIRST Division at SCB. She has been with SCB for 12 years. Since joining SCB in 2008, Toranavikrai served in various senior management roles covering the wealth management business. Prior to that, she was a senior banker at RBS Coutts in Singapore and deputy head of Corporate and Investment Banking at BNP Paribas Thailand.
Indosuez Wealth Management added four relationship managers to bolster its Asia team. Priscilla Cheong, Lau Sim Yee, and Ho Yee Lin joined in Singapore and Eddie Hui joined in Hong Kong. Cheong moved from UBS Wealth Management, where she was an executive director responsible for UHNWIs. Her 25-year career spans work at Bank of Singapore, Deutsche Bank AG, BNP Paribas Private Bank and Credit Lyonnais (Suisse) SA. Sim Yee was previously a director at Credit Suisse, managing North Asian clients, and also managed HNWs at UBS, BNP Paribas Private Bank and Citibank during a 20-year career. Ho Yee Lin previously worked at LGT Bank (Singapore) as executive director.
Charles Lin, a senior Vanguard executive, and most recently its Asia head, left the giant asset management house. He left to pursue other opportunities. Axel Lomholt, the group’s head of product for Asia and a former executive at BlackRock, is the interim head of Asia as the company conducted an executive search.