Barclays hires wealth management head from Nomura

Barclays has hired Nomura’s former head of wealth management Singapore, Tsukasa Miyachi, as a managing director to focus on the Indonesia market.

It is one of four hires the bank has made recently in Southeast Asia, of which Miyachi is the most senior. He joined in Singapore at the start of April, having quit Nomura earlier this year.

In fact, Miyachi had been Nomura’s head of wealth management for Asia ex-Japan up until the middle of last year, a spokesman for the Japanese bank confirms.

However, after Koki Miura relocated from Tokyo to Singapore, he took over Miyachi's responsibilities and reassigned him to head of wealth management Singapore. Nomura’s co-heads of wealth management in Hong Kong are Harrison Ho and Shin Asano.

AsianInvestor understands that Nomura has since replaced Miyachi with Nobuhiro Sano as managing director and head of wealth management Singapore, reporting to Miura. The move became effective at the start of this month after Sano was transferred from Shanghai, where he was chief representative of its Shanghai office.

Only recently Nomura hired Bill Tsang from Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management as head of products Asia ex-Japan in its wealth management division in a move billed as a step by Nomura to expand its product platform across the region.

Meanwhile, also joining Barclays on the wealth management side to cover Indonesia was Erliena Yulianawati from Clariden Leu, which was recently absorbed by parent company Credit Suisse.

Both Miyachi and Yulianawati will report to Barclays’ Indonesia head Errie Maksum, who joined what was formerly Barclays Wealth in 2010 from Credit Suisse. Barclays rebranded its private banking (Barclays Wealth), investment banking (Barclays Capital) and corporate business (Barclays Corporate) last month in an integration drive to unite under the Barclays title.

Completing Barclays’ hires were Fumiko Omura, who joined as a director last month to focus on Southeast Asian markets (mainly Singapore/Malaysia), and Eugene Huang, who joined its Greater China team in February to focus on serving ultra high-net-worth clients in Greater China. Both came from Merrill Lynch.

Omura will report to Barclays’ market head for Singapore and Malaysia, Soh Chye Guan, while Huang will report to Greater China head Carol Chen, based in Singapore. Januar Tjandra is the firm’s Greater China head based in Hong Kong.

Barclays is understood to have more than 100 private bankers in Asia-Pacific, including about 70 covering South and Southeast Asia.

Since Srinivas Siripurapu joined as head of wealth management for South Asia and Southeast Asia in 2009, Barclays says it has increased revenues in that region by 50% each year and more than doubled AUM.

Although it does not break out its South Asia and Southeast Asia figures, its Asia-Pacific AUM is understood to make up about 10% of its global figure of £164 billion ($265 billion).