State Street poaches Citi's China fund services head

US financial services firm State Street has appointed Kevin Wong as head of sector solutions for Asia Pacific, effective yesterday.

He joins from Citi, where he was securities and fund services business country manager for China. As of press time, the US bank had not responded to queries on whether he had been or would be replaced.

Wong replaces Chris Taylor, who in May took over as head of State Street’s global services and global markets businesses in Australia, based in Sydney. Taylor in turn replaced Ian Martin, who took up the newly created role of head of global markets and global exchange for Asia Pacific.

Based in Hong Kong, Wong is tasked with delivering new revenue opportunities and reports to Seck Wai-Kwong, head of State Street’s global services and global markets businesses.

“Kevin will be leading sales teams that are organised around client sectors – what we call sector solutions – with dedicated teams focused solely on each client group, including asset managers, asset owners, insurance firms, alternatives, official institutions, data and analytics,” Seck told AsianInvestor.

“The sector solutions teams work across all our business lines, bringing together products and services relevant for each client.”

Wong is one of State Street’s three regional sector heads. Stefan Gmur is responsible for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while Scott Fitzgerald heads North America.

“Facing increasing investment complexity, changing regulations and heightened need for cost management, institutional investors are placing a higher demand on their global custodians to not only provide the core services better, cheaper and faster, but offer solutions to solve challenges they are presented with,” Seck said.

Wong has also held senior positions at BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and the Bankers Trust in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, covering global custody, fund administration, securities lending and cash management.