ING boosts debt team

ING has made three appointments to a re-styled Asian debt markets operation. Elbert Pattijn has been made the head of debt products origination, a new position that will be based in Singapore. This role will cover marketing the full suite of bonds, securitization and loans to ING's Asian clients, and to global clients who are looking for local currency debt in Asia.

Pattijn joins from Amsterdam where he was previously head of counterparty risk, country risk, risk research and modeling. He has been with ING since 1996 and before that had worked at Barclays and ABN AMRO.

The second move sees Ajay Sawhney becoming the head of acquisition finance and sponsor coverage for Asia, a new position for the bank in the region. Sawhney is presently the head of ING's Asian technology, media and telecoms structured finance group and will keep that role as well, in effect just extending his mandate to a natural coverage of private equity groups in this space. It will see ING try to get into the booming buyout market with a debt capability added to its existing M&A franchise.

Sawhney has been with ING since 1994, when he joined the bank from Citibank. He worked in India until 1998 running the project finance unit before moving to Hong Kong to work in the structured finance team.
Finally Mark Newman has been promoted to head of financial markets for Asia, taking over from Percy Rueber who is moving to Europe to be global head of intermediation and deputy global head of financial markets. Newman was previously head of structured products and structured credit for Asia and will keep those responsibilities.

The new role will see him add responsibility for all of ING's regional fixed income sales, trading, sovereign and credit research, foreign exchange, money markets, credit and equity derivatives to his existing duties. Newman has been with ING since1992, the last eight years being positioned in Asia.

"These appointments serve to strengthen ING's capabilities to cross sell a range of high-value added products to our key clients," says Wifred Nagel, head of wholesale banking. "Elbert's appointment ensures ING has dedicated origination resources at senior level, and will add further value across loan syndications, securitization and debt capital markets. In addition Elbert's risk management experience provides an added boost to our ability to maximize the use of ING's balance sheet to win value-added client business.

"Ajay's appointment bolsters our leveraged buy-out capabilities and further enhances our structured finance business, allowing us to offer an even wider range of products to our clients. The appointment of Mark as head of financial markets also provides deep knowledge and experience of Asia at a senior level, which will be vital as we seek to offer more financial markets products to our clients."

Overall the moves can be seen as a move to re-energize ING's credentials as a debt focused wholesale bank, after the sale of its cash equities business last year. Existing heavyweights in the bank's debt business such as Robert Scholten for loans, Kevin Lam for securitization and Ehwan Hahm for bonds will be staying in their current positions.