RBS hires from Barclays in prime services

The Royal Bank of Scotland has announced the appointment of William Egan from Barclays in a newly created role as head of mandate sales for prime services in Asia-Pacific.

It represents the first hire since David Gray came on board this June as head of prime services and client execution for Asia-Pacific.

Based in Singapore, Egan will report regionally to Gray and will focus on winning mandates across FX, rates, flow credit, futures and options. Functionally he will report to Fred Matt, the bank’s global head of prime services sales in London.

RBS has made it clear it sees prime services as a key area of focus, with a changing regulatory environment resulting in rising demand for front-to-back execution and servicing across multiple asset classes from clients including institutional investors and asset managers.

It is looking to build its Asia business and more hires are expected shortly. It comes after RBS hired Fabian Shey from UBS last October as global head of futures, prime services and electronic markets. Shey and Gray were former colleagues at UBS.

In a recent interview with AsianInvestor, Gray said RBS’s prime brokerage business would focus on servicing macro, fixed income and FX hedge funds with the aim of providing a niche offering.

In doing so it is taking on Deutsche Bank in FX and Barclays Capital in the fixed income prime brokerage fields.

Egan had spent the past six years with Barclays, where he was part of the prime services team in New York and most recently head of FX prime brokerage and OTC clearing in Singapore. He has also held positions at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, both in New York.

A spokesman for Barclays in Singapore declined to comment when asked if the bank had any plans to replace Egan.