ABN AMRO launches a new financial institutions coverage unit

ABN AMRO has launched a new Asian Financial institutions team and has appointed Curtis Chen as its head. Samuel Zavatti will be the managing director, bringing 31 years of diversified international banking experience. Zavatti joins ABN AMRO from Bank of America and will serve as global head of central banks and regional financial institutions.

Chen and Zavatti will report to Henry Tillman, global head of ABN AMRO's financial institutions business unit.

Helen Pun, director, will head financial institutions coverage for Greater China. She has 15 years banking experience from Citibank and JP Morgan/Chase.

K.S. Park, director, will head financial institutions coverage for Korea. Park spent 20 years with JP Morgan/Chase in commercial and investment banking. Also in Korea, K.Y. Kim, vice president, joins the team after seven years at JP Morgan/Chase.

Laurence Pau, director, will cover regional financial institutions and central banks for North Asia. He joins from Bank of America with 20 years experience and will be based in Hong Kong.

Paddy Mishra, director, also joins from Bank of America and will head the coverage of regional financial institutions and central banks for South Asia. Mishra will be based in Mumbai and has 16 years experience.

Mark Clews, director, will cover Australian financial institutions from Sydney. He joins the team after 15 years  at Citibank in Australia.

Agnes Chew will join ABN AMRO in Malaysia and Jusuf Adhidharma will cover Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines. Both Chew and Adhidharma come from Bank of America.

In addition, a number of important moves have been made in the financial institutions corporate finance team, headed by Mark Stadler. Farzad Alvi, director and Petrus Sudjono, associate director, both join from Deutsche Bank where they headed several major bank restructuring engagements in the region.

Vanessa Holland, associate, joins from KPMG where she headed the non-life insurance M&A practice. Finally, Nicole Fende, associate joins the team from Aetna, where she worked for eight years, most recently as CFO and chief actuary for Aetna Philippines.