Moore the merrier for ABN ECM

A new joint head of Asian ECM has been appointed at ABN AMRO Rothschild following the bank's recent global re-organization. This saw Matthew Kirkby elevated to a newly created role as head of Asian ECM and M&A execution.

In his place, former Asian M&A head, John Moore, will jointly run Asian ECM alongside Piers Higson Smith, who has always been employed by the Rothschild side of the joint venture. Aside from this one personnel change, it has been business as usual for the 20-strong Asian ECM joint venture, which has been unaffected by wider changes at the Dutch bank.

Alongside the two MD's, the team incorporates six directors, four of whom have geographical responsibilities. In North Asia, Steven Zwaan covers Korea, while Bernie Liu looks after Taiwan and Kenneth Chow Hong Kong and China. South East Asia and India falls under Anand Trivedi, who is also based in Hong Kong.

Moore and Higson-Smith have split the region between them, with the former overseeing Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Malaysia, while the latter will cover Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. They will both oversee China.

Rounding off the senior team members are Steve Taylor who runs hybrids and Rene Mijne who runs syndicate.

Moore has been based in Hong Kong for the last 18 months, although he originally joined the bank in Hong Kong back in 1997. At the end of 2000, however, he was sent to New Zealand to set up an ECM operation for ABN AMRO Rothschild.

He is particularly proud of the fact that ABN rose from nowhere to head the local league tables by the time he left at the end of 2003. ABN is similarly on a roll in Asia, where it has been one of the busiest houses over the past two weeks with deals for ProMOS Technologies and Chunghwa Picture Tubes in Taiwan.