Bank of Singapore hires two, but loses China marketing head

The private-banking arm of OCBC, Bank of Singapore, has made two senior hires in Singapore, but Mark Chan recently resigned from his post as China head of marketing.

Chan remains in Hong Kong and will run the China sales team at ABN Amro Private Banking. He joined ING Asia Private Bank in August 2008, before the firm merged in January with OCBC's wealth-management unit to form BoS. ABN Amro declined to comment.

Chan's 30-year career includes head of Greater China wealth-management at Deutsche Bank (where he spent six years) and eight years as head of Taiwan and China at BNP Paribas Private Bank. He has also worked at Citibank, the First National Bank of Chicago and the Bank of Montreal.

Meanwhile, Jan Lee will assume a newly created role as chief economist at BoS in Singapore in September, reporting to chief investment officer Hou Wey Fook. Alistair Marsh joined in May as head of trading advisory and product development, reporting to Marc Van de Walle, head of product management.

Before BoS was launched this year, OCBC's private bank had tapped the capabilities of the chief economist of the Asian wholesale banking unit. "The new chief economist is all part of the deepening of the dedicated resources of the open-architecture infrastructure and global private-banking platform and proprietary research we have been offering," says a BoS spokeswoman.

Jan Lee has in-depth knowledge of the economies of the G7 countries and emerging markets and brings with him experience in macro research and markets strategy across asset classes, says BoS.

Lee joins from the Australian government, where he was a policy adviser and economist. Before that, he held senior roles at various banks and wealth-management firms in Hong Kong and Singapore. These include UBS, where he was a China economist and currency strategist, after which he led Goldman Sachs's Asia and China research team.

Marsh replaces James Leong, who had run the advisory business for the last 10 years. He now heads a new premium service for sophisticated active traders dealing in complex products, which BoS rolled out recently. The firm envisages that this service will contribute to the long-term growth of its investment-advisory business.

Before joining BoS, Marsh headed the product and advisory group at ING Private Bank in Switzerland. He has 26 years of dealing experience in financial services. He has also worked at Citibank, Indosuez and American Express Bank, where he was responsible for securities trading and structured product activities in Asia, based in Singapore.