Weekly roundup of people news, Aug 30
Lombard Odier names new Asia COO, CRO
Swiss firm Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch has hired Fred Horsey as COO and general counsel for Asia Pacific and named Christophe Morel chief risk officer for Asia Pacific, both based in Hong Kong.
Both are newly created roles, established in response to the need for more back- and middle-office staff to support the growing number of front-office employees, as reported by AsianInvestor earlier this month.
Horsey was formerly Asia-Pacific COO at Janus Capital but left the firm in June 2011. AsianInvestor could not ascertain by press time what he has been doing since then. Gigi Chan is currently Asia-Pacific COO at Janus.
Prior to Janus, Horsey was Asia COO at Barclays Global Investors (before it became part of BlackRock). He previously spent seven years at JP Morgan Asset Management as head of product development.
Meanwhile Morel, currently senior vice president of Lombard Odier’s internal audit department in Geneva, will relocate to Hong Kong on September 1 to take on the Asia-Pacific CRO role. Morel has been with the firm since 2000. He previously held internal auditing positions at HSBC Republic Bank and UBS.
Lombard Odier, which had global assets under management of $183 billion as of June 30, has more additions planned.
Rothschild hires UBS veteran
Long-time UBS executive Alois Müller will join financial advisory group Rothschild as North Asia head of wealth management on September 2. He will report to Veit de Maddalena, co-CEO of Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust.
Based in Hong Kong, Müller will build out the firm’s regional client base. A spokeswoman declines to say how many people are on his team, but says the firm is in expansion mode and aims to hire more advisers.
Müller spent over 35 years at UBS in a number of senior positions in Zurich, London, New York and most recently Hong Kong as head of ultra-high-net-worth clients for several Asian countries.
Asia Frontier adds to Hong Kong office
Fund house Asia Frontier Capital has added two in to its Hong Kong office. Ruchir Desai joins as a senior investment analyst while Stephen Friel is marketing director.
Desai will work on the firm’s AFC Asia Frontier Fund, researching investment ideas in Asian frontier markets including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. His position is newly created.
Desai was previously a senior analyst at Mumbai-based HandsOn Ventures, a middle-market private equity firm focused on the business services sector. Before that, he covered the software services industry at Pioneer Investcorp, an institutional brokerage, also in Mumbai.
Friel meanwhile joins from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, where he was statistical officer. He replaces Amir Merchant, who worked at Asia Frontier for nine months. A spokesman declined to comment on Merchant’s future plans.
A UBS spokesman says there are no immediate plans to replace Müller, declining to comment further.
Nikko AM names marketing head
Nikko Asset Management has appointed David Collins as head of group marketing and communications.
Based in Tokyo, Collins is responsible for the firm’s communications efforts worldwide and aims to increase regional awareness of the firm.
Blair Pickerell previously held the title global chief marketing officer and head of Asia, and will now just focus on his role as head of the region, with Collins taking over all marketing responsibilities.
Collins reports to Charles Beazley, president and CEO at Nikko AM. He previously worked at The Hartford Financial Services Group as head of external corporate communications since 2011, based in Hartford, Connecticut.
Before that, he was a television producer at Reuters in New York and also held senior marketing roles at asset manager State Street Global Advisors and rating agency Standard & Poor’s. He is fluent in Japanese.
A spokesman at Hartford declined to comment on whether Collins has been replaced.
Simmons & Simmons appoints partner
Law firm Simmons & Simmons has named Gaven Cheong as partner in its China financial markets’ practice in Hong Kong.
He will focus on investment funds and regulatory work and work with institutional investors on cross-border and domestic transactions.
Cheong previously worked at law firm Sidley Austin in Hong Kong covering investment funds and litigation and before that as a solicitor at both Clifford Chance and Herbert Smith.
Simmons & Simmons has 75 legal staff and 55 business-support employees in Hong Kong.
UBS launches wealth management programme
Swiss bank UBS has introduced a wealth management training programme in Asia Pacific for its more than 1,000 client advisers in the region.
The two-year part-time programme offers lessons in client-book management, client investment and relationship management.
Faculty include staff from universities Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Zurich, as well as consultancies PwC and KPMG and UBS executives.
Malaysian regulator launches training programme
Malaysia's Securities Commission (SC) has launched a capital markets training programme. The programme will be jointly offered by the SC and 36 local and foreign investment banks and brokerage firms.
After a pre-employment preparatory course, 1,000 selected graduates will participate in a training curriculum focused on knowledge and skills specific to capital markets, including licensing examinations relevant to securities and derivatives dealing.
Malaysia’s capital markets are expected to grow to RM4.5 trillion ($1.4 trillion) by 2020 from RM2.6 trillion today, with securities and derivatives accounting for a significant amount.
“The government recognises the importance of having a sufficient pool of talent to support Malaysia’s economic growth at both the international and domestic level,” says Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah, Malaysia’s minister of finance. “It is also important for us to bring in young talent to continuously drive innovation for greater economic development.”
Other people moves reported in AsianInvestor this week:
PE investors struggling to find staff in Asia
Korea's NPS starts search for new CIO
UBS hires Yip to build Asian ETF business
Adia lures L&G IM’s Asia equities head