ING Bank roles out senior managment appointments

ING Bank has rung in the impending new year with a series of regional senior management appointments which will see four members of its executive team taking on new and enhanced positions. Malcolm Brown, who joined ING in 1989, leaves the position of head of corporate finance in Asia, to assume the title of head of wholesale banking clients from Hong Kong. He brings 12 years of in-house expertise to the new role, which includes a broad range of advisory and capital markets experience in the region. He previously held the positions of head of mergers and acquisitions in Asia from 1995 to 1999, and also worked in the same division in London for Barings Brothers. Commencing the new role on January 1, Brown will report to John Howland-Jackson, CEO of ING Bank Asia. Replacing Brown as ING BankÆs head of corporate finance, Asia, is Grenville Thynne. He will relocate from Sydney to Singapore, where he held the position of head of corporate finance for Australia. Before his Australian posting, Thynne was in Hong Kong as its head of the financial institutions group for Asia, a position that he also called his own at ABN AMRO before joining the group in 2000. Joining Thynne in Singapore is ING veteran Hans Grisel, who comes to the Lion City as country manager and head of lending, Asia. Grisel will leave the role of country head, Japan, a market he has worked since 2001. In Japan, he was initially head of corporate financial services for the country and general manager of ING Bank N.V (Tokyo Branch), before taking on his present role. The new appointment marks a return to Singapore with the institution for Grisel, who once held the titles of head of Asian power project finance and head of Asia credit restructuring. Back in Hong Kong, the bank will also bolster the title Jean-Francois Gillard to include the position of country manager for Hong Kong, in addition to his present titles of country manager for China and general manager for ING Bank N.V, Hong Kong. His promotion is the latest in a long line of senior appointments, which include the country head for Malaysia, and head of corporate financial services for Greater China and general manager of ING Hong Kong Branch. According to ING Bank, the senior restructuring moves come as it looks to strengthen its focus on providing high-value-added products and services to clients, and is hailed by Howland-Jackson as ôstrengthening its ability to cross-sell its defined range of products and services to its regional customer base.ö