Jupiter AM hires Swarbreck, wins HK licence
London-based Jupiter Fund Management is busy adding staff in Hong Kong, having won a type 1 (dealing) licence from the city’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) last week.
Ex-BlackRock asset management veteran Peter Swarbreck joined in recent weeks as head of Asia-Pacific, following the arrival in January of Tony Yu as sales director from Franklin Templeton, both based in Hong Kong.
The transfer of Swarbreck's authorisation to Jupiter Asset Management (Hong Kong) is understood to be in progress with the SFC. He was previously managing director and head of Hong Kong at BlackRock, but left the US fund manager at the end of 2012.
Yu was previously vice-president of sales and marketing at Franklin Templeton Investments from July 2006 to January 2013. Before that, he was an investment consultant at Citibank.
Jupiter declined to comment for this article.
The firm's CEO, Edward Bonham Carter, was quoted in August as saying Jupiter – which ran £26.3 billion ($40.4 billion) in assets as of end-2012 – would open a Hong Kong sales office last year. The move adds to the firm’s existing operations in Singapore and the business in Taiwan it has had since 2008 in partnership with Taishin Bank, namely Taishin Securities Investment Advisory.
“Jupiter has raised quite a lot of money in the region and has a successful JV in Taiwan,” says one source familiar with the firm. “Tony has presumably been hired to do a good job of building the business in Hong Kong.”
Jupiter has a sales director in Singapore, David Conway, who has been with the firm since October 2009, when he joined from Royal Skandia.
There is another ex-BlackRock veteran who joined Jupiter in London last year, which may explain the connection to Swarbreck. Maarten Slendebroek arrived in August to head global distribution last year from BlackRock, where he had worked for 18 years, most recently as head of international retail.
Swarbreck joined BlackRock following the merger with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) in 2006, where he had been head of fixed income for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Before that, he had been with Mercury Asset Management (which became part of MLIM) since 1990, holding positions in business development and client relationship management. Prior to MLIM, he worked in fixed investment management for an international bank in the Middle East and was previously a fund manager at two leading fund management firms.