AsianInvestor's weekly roundup of job-hoppers, April 13

BNY Mellon names Asia-Pacific strategy head, new Singapore chief
Asset management and servicing group BNY Mellon made two senior appointments earlier this month.

Leow Chong-Jin has been promoted to country executive and general manager of the Singapore branch, and Jane Caire has taken up the role of Asia-Pacific head of strategy and development, product and marketing for investment management.

Leow also retains his role as Asia-Pacific head of asset servicing and succeeds Jai Arya, who at the start of last year was named head of BNY Mellon’s global sovereign institutions group. 

Leow will continue to report to Tim Keaney, vice chairman of BNY Mellon and chief executive of BNY Mellon Asset Servicing, but now also reports to Steve Lackey, chairman of Asia Pacific. 

Based in Hong Kong for her newly created role, Caire reports to Alan Harden, Asia-Pacific chief executive of BNY Mellon Investment Management.

Caire joined from ING Investment Management, where she was most recently head of business management, having joined the firm in 2008 as regional head of product development and management.

Caire has 19 years’ experience in the Asian financial services industry and before that 10 years’ corporate legal experience in Australia. She previously worked for Alliance Trust in the UK and Citi, CLSA and Franklin Templeton in Asia Pacific. She is a commercial lawyer by background and training, and her focus has been on business development.

ING IM did not respond by press time to queries about whether Caire has been replaced.

BNY Mellon is not the only asset manager to have put in place a regional strategy head in Asia in recent months. As first reported by AsianInvestor in February, BlackRock in February named Nick Good, former regional head of iShares, to the newly created post of Asia-Pacific head of strategy and business development.

BlackRock had started to build its regional corporate strategy team in late 2010, as reported by AsianInvestor in April last year.

ABN Amro names new Asia private bank COO, and others
Dutch bank ABN Amro has hired Daniel Teo as chief operating officer for Singapore and private banking COO for Asia, as of 2 April. He reports to Hugues Delcourt, country executive for Singapore and private banking CEO for Asia.

Teo was previously COO and managing director at Bank of Singapore (BoS) and left the firm in February. He was a founding member of ING Asia Private Bank in 2001 and was closely involved with the integration of the ING business with Singapore's OCBC and the launch of BoS in 2009.

Patrick Goh has replaced Teo as COO at BoS. He was previously senior vice president at OCBC, where he held positions in the global treasury division such as head of the business management unit and in the group audit division including head of treasury, investment banking and market risk audit.

ABN Amro has also made other appointments in the region in recent months.

Rajiv Sodhi rejoined in January as team leader, senior private banker and head of the non-resident Indians desk, a newly created role based in Singapore. He was most recently a senior private banker with Merrill Lynch in Dubai. Before that, Sodhi was a senior relationship manager with ABN Amro for more than five years. Merrill declined to comment on whether he had been or would be replaced.

Alfie Lau joined in February as regional head of private lending, a newly created position based in Hong Kong. He was previously with Hang Seng Bank, where his roles included senior risk strategy manager and senior compliance project manager. Before that, he was regional head of credit for Asia private banking at Fortis Bank.

Josephine Feilzer joined in February in a newly created role as relationship manager on ABN Amro’s private wealth management (PWM) and international desk team in Singapore. This desk connects Asia to the bank’s PWM network in Europe and facilitates referrals from and to the international and energy, commodities and transportation (ECT) finance businesses.

Feilzer has 13 years of merchant banking experience, including six years in Asia. She has held several senior roles within the ECT finance and principal finance teams in Asia, and as a director in the Asia financial institutions group.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management names new North Asia NRI head
Akshay Jaitly joined BNP Paribas Wealth Management in late March as head of non-resident Indians (NRI) for North Asia, based in Hong Kong. He reports to Stephane Honig, head of Indian markets and leads a team of relationship managers dedicated to Indian clients in North Asia.

Jaitly's role is an expanded version of Ananda Bhaumik's position, who had been NRI head for Hong Kong but is no longer with BNP Paribas.

He was most recently global head of private banking at Axis Bank in Mumbai, where he was instrumental in establishing the NRI business line. Prior to that, he was NRI market director for North Asia at Merrill Lynch and before that with Citi in Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore, looking after NRI clients.

Axis did not respond to a query about whether he would be or had been replaced.

Credit Suisse expands transition management team
Credit Suisse in February added Victoria Shelton to its transition management team as an associate in Sydney, reporting to regional TM head Tom Wyse, who is based in the same city.

Shelton has been with Credit Suisse for four years, having come through the bank's graduate programme. She spent her graduate rotation in operations, fixed income and proprietary trading and most recently equity research sales.

“Victoria brings strong analytical and project management skills as well solid operational knowledge to the CS TM Apac team,” says Wyse, who joined Credit Suisse from Deutsche Bank in April 2010.

BBH promotes Rosensweig to partner
Custodian bank Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) said it named Bill Rosensweig as a partner on January 1.

Rosensweig joined BBH in 2001 and is based in Hong Kong, where he has responsibility for BBH’s Asia-Pacific investor services clients. He is a director of BBH’s subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Japan and oversees BBH’s Beijing representative office.

Prior to his current role, Rosensweig was responsible for BBH's Infomediary business in the US and BBH private account services in the UK.

Nikko AM joins ICI Global, legal head named to steering committee
Nikko Asset Management became the first Asia-based asset manager to join global trade organisation ICI Global, a new initiative of the Investment Company Institute (ICI), on April 1. ICI Global focuses on regulatory, market and other issues for investment funds, their managers and investors.

David Monroe, Nikko AM’s chief legal officer, will join the ICI global steering committee. He will provide input on regulatory developments, market structure and other policy issues affecting the asset management industry in Asia and beyond.

“This is an important step for us, given our recent repositioning from our traditional Japanese heritage to a more broadly Asia based asset management company,” says Monroe.

“Given the significant changes happening with investors and regulators in many markets," he adds, "we believe it’s a crucial time to be contributing to the debate, to ensure managers and their investors have all the facts and can gain a long-term perspective, particularly from our position as an Asian-focused business.”

ICI members and their affiliates manage $16.38 trillion globally.

Other people-move stories reported by AsianInvestor in the past two weeks:

Mercer to rebuild Asia wealth team after departures

Coutts boosts Asia products and services team

Chinatrust launches offshore private banking business

JP Morgan’s Wallace switches to hedge fund Factorial

KIC appoints ex-BoK exec for risk role

BlackRock names new transition management head

Fubon AM replaces chairman after surprise resignation

Sarasin hires consulting head, Greater China RMs

KIC appoints first Korean national CIO

SFC bolsters committees with new appointments