NAB creates two senior positions in Asia.

Australia's largest bank, National Australia Bank (NAB) has announced two newly created roles to be split between its Hong Kong and Japanese operations.

Moving from NAB's Melbourne dealing room to Hong Kong is Matthew Blackwell, who will be head of structured products, Asia. In the new job, Blackwell will be responsible for delivering structured corporate bonds, credit derivatives, equity linked and currency solutions to the bank's Asian clients.

In the Melbourne dealing room, Blackwell was NAB's head of credit trading, Australia. He joined from Bank of New Zealand, where he traded derivatives and structured interest rate products. In total, Blackwell brings 11 years of Australian and New Zealand related financial markets experience to Hong Kong and will report to both Doug Goldsmith and Brian Watt, co-heads of markets, Asia.

In NAB's Japanese operations, Shinya Fukumoto will come to the bank as director and head of capital markets, Japan. Also reporting to Goldsmith and Watt, his primary responsibilities for NAB will be the distribution of debt related and structured products to its Japan-based clients.

Working closely with its Australia, Asia, Europe and US-based debt teams, Fukumoto will lend support to NAB's debt raising activities for corporate and institutional banking clients.

Fukumoto jumps to the Australian bank from a ten-year stint at TD Securities. At TD, he was most recently vice president and director of its strategic solutions sales group responsible for origination and distribution of fixed income, capital markets, derivatives and structured products.

According to the bank, these appointments are to be viewed as complementary and have been implemented to enhance the value of its debt product capabilities.