Citi hires eight for Asia-Pacific prime broking team

Citi has made new appointments in its Asia-Pacific prime finance team in capital introductions, sales, client servicing, risk management and futures. And the bank has further hires planned, notably for synthetic and stock loan trading in Hong Kong and Sydney.

The eight new staff are located in Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney, with five of them assuming newly created positions. They underline growing demand for hedge-fund services in the region, says Hannah Goodwin, Asia head of prime finance in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, Simon Ng joins from HSBC in a newly created role as chief operating officer for the futures unit. With 13 years' experience, he was involved in rolling out HSBC's futures product in Asia. The UK bank could not provide information on whether he has been or will be replaced by press time.

Dagmar Baeuerle has joined as director in Hong Kong, another new role. She will be responsible for the build-out of Citi's consultancy services. Baeuerle was previously with US asset manager Crown Advisors International as a partner holding dual COO/CFO roles. Before that, she was COO for a US equity long/short hedge fund. She has also held consulting roles with The Hayes Group in Hong Kong and Booz Allen & Hamilton in New York.

Also joining the team in Hong Kong are Kenneth Leung as senior vice-president in risk management (another newly created post), Mattan Lurie as vice-president in the capital-introductions team, and Becky Yang as vice-president in sales.

Leung joins has seven years' experience covering prime finance and market risk. Lurie has raised over $2 billion in the past three years for alternative investment funds in his previous roles at Citic Securities International Capital and Hony Capital in China.

Yang has six years' experience in sales and marketing to US and Asian institutional and corporate clients. She was previously based in Beijing at Avantage Ventures, a Hong Kong firm that provides investment advisory services to social enterprises and social investors. Yang also previously worked in hedge-fund servicing at Lehman Brothers.

In Singapore, June Chan arrives as a director in the client-servicing team. Before joining Citi, she worked for 18 years for Morgan Stanley in New York. Neil Toy joins as vice-president in the sales team, having previously served multi-strategy clients for Goldman Sachs in London.

In Sydney, Miles Tissington becomes vice-president on the futures desk. He comes from JP Morgan and has extensive futures experience following stints in the UK, Europe and Australia.

Lurie, Tissington and Yang were hired as replacements for existing staff, but Citi did not provide details of the departing employees by press time.