UPDATE: DeAWM hires ex-JP Morgan veteran: sources

JP Morgan Asset Management’s former head of North Asia, Ken Tam, has joined Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management as head of North Asia sales, say sources. He is said to be tasked with covering the institutional and retail business and to report to Ravi Raju, DeAWM's Asia-Pacific chief executive.

He had spent 20 years at JP Morgan AM, including seven as head of North Asia, but left the US firm in February last year after the transfer of Jed Laskowitz from New York as Asia-Pacific chief executive in August 2012. JP Morgan AM said in June last year that it had no plans to replace Tam.

The move follows Michele Bang’s departure to Eastspring Investments, where she started as deputy chief executive and global head of distribution in October, having been with Deutsche since 2005. She had been head of the global client group for North Asia at DeAWM.

The German firm declined to confirm whether Tam had joined the firm.

One Hong Kong-based recruiter says: “This is all quite a turnaround from 12-18 months ago, when [Deutsche Bank’s] asset management business was put up for sale.” (The group didn’t find a buyer and ultimately folded the investment unit into its wealth management arm.)

The recruiter points out that the firm also recently hired a regional chief investment officer. Elke Schoeppl-Jost arrived in January from Hong Kong’s BEA Union Investment Management, where she had been CIO (she has since been replaced by Henry Chan, formerly of Pyramis). Given her appointment, sources say they expect DeAWM to hire more on the investment side.

Deutsche seems to be following a model similar to that of Credit Suisse – which has also merged its asset and wealth management businesses – in that it is playing to its strengths and leveraging off the structuring capabilities of the bank, says another recruiter. “If they can do that, I would think they’d look to create additional product here.”

DeAWM has also recently been busy launching exchange-traded funds under the renminbi qualified foreign institutional investor (RQFII) scheme, for example in London and New York.

The company’s assets managed in Asia Pacific stood at $50.7 billion of its global total of $934.7 billion as of September 30.