Barclays Wealth to double South Asia team by end-2011
The wealth-management division of UK bank Barclays has added six senior bankers to its Southeast Asia and South Asia teams in Singapore, as part of a major hiring drive.
Soh Chye Guan will join Barclays Wealth on July 23 as market head of Singapore and Malaysia to manage the team of private bankers for those markets. He was previously senior director and market leader for Malaysia and head of the senior client partner team at HSBC Private Bank in Singapore, a post he assumed last year.
Soh has 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, of which the last 20 were in senior private-banking roles, including stints at JP Morgan and various European financial institutions.
Errie Maksum will join Barclays Wealth on August 23 as market head of Indonesia to manage the team of private bankers covering that market. Maksum was previously director and team leader for Indonesia at Credit Suisse in Singapore, a post he had held for five years. He has also worked in wealth management at Standard Chartered and Citi Private Bank in Indonesia and Singapore.
Both Soh and Maksum will report to Srinivas Siripurapu, Singapore-based head of Southeast Asia and South Asia and market manager for the South Asian community, who joined late last year.
Former Southeast Asia head Benedikt Maissen left Barclays Wealth in December to join Société Générale Private Banking as head of Asean. His position will not be filled, says spokesman Gan Leemeng. "Instead, responsibility for our important markets in Southeast Asia has been split between Soh Chye Guan and Errie Maksum."
Siripurapu's target is to increase the combined Southeast Asia and South Asia headcount by more than 60% by the end of the year and more than double it by the end of 2011, from January 2010 levels, adds Gan.
A source familiar with the firm says Siripurapu manages a team of about 40 bankers covering Southeast Asia and South Asia, and Barclays Wealth has around 100 bankers in Asia-Pacific as a whole.
Barclays Wealth has also appointed four other bankers in Singapore.
Rachel Loong joined on July 1 as a director covering Singapore. She has close to 20 years of financial services industry experience, of which the last eight were with Credit Suisse in Singapore as executive director and senior client partner serving high-net-worth clients in Singapore and Taiwan. Before that, she was a relationship manager with Citibank for more than six years.
Credit Suisse declined to comment on whether Maksum or Loong would be replaced.
Another new Barclays Wealth hire is Sisyanti Jonosisworo, who arrived on June 14 as a vice-president in the Indonesia team from ANZ Bank Panin in Indonesia, where she was a team leader managing corporate and institutional banking clients. She has 20 years of private- and corporate-banking experience across firms such as UBS, Citibank, Sanwa Indonesia Bank, Indosuez Indonesia Bank, ING Bank Jakarta and Bank Sumitomo Niaga.
Nilesh Thakkar and Arunabh Banerjee joined Barclays Wealth as vice-presidents in the South Asia teams on June 2 and June 25, respectively. Both move from UBS in Singapore where they serviced non-resident Indians. Thakkar has 10 years' experience in wealth management, including roles with Citi in Hong Kong, India and Singapore, while Banerjee has close to 10 years' experience in the banking industry across roles with ABN Amro and HSBC in India.
Neither HSBC nor UBS commented by press time on whether the departing executives would be or had been replaced.
Siripurapu says: "High-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, as well as high-net-worth non-resident Indians, continue to be our key client segments."
Barclays Wealth also has an onshore private-banking business in India, which it launched in November 2008.
Meanwhile, on July 1, the UK firm announced a private-banking joint venture with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Nikko Cordial Securities to provide wealth-management services to HNWIs in Japan.