UBS loses another exec to Barclays Wealth

Barclays Wealth hired Helen Pun as Hong Kong market head on April 8, to manage the team of private bankers covering the territory. Head of North Asia Joanna Chu, to whom Pun reports, previously held those responsibilities.

Pun had been a senior client adviser on the Greater China key-clients team at UBS in Hong Kong since 2007, and the Swiss bank currently has no immediate plans to replace her. She has around 25 years of private and corporate banking experience across US and European financial institutions in Hong Kong, including Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. 

There will be further hires at Barclays Wealth in Hong Kong, says spokesman Leemeng Gan, but he would not disclose specific hiring plans or targets. "We continue to focus on selectively hiring very senior and experienced bankers serving the key markets of Greater China, India and Indonesia," he adds.

Barclays Wealth has hired several senior bankers in the past few months, with notable Asia-Pacific appointments including Singapore-based Srinivas Siripurapu in August as head of South Asia and Southeast Asia, and Vikram Malhotra earlier this year as head of South Asia, both of whom moved from UBS with several colleagues. And Partha Roychoudhury also joined late last year as head of North Asia.

Barclays Wealth, the wealth-management division of Barclays group, had £151.2 billion in AUM at the end of 2009, but does not disclose the regional breakdown.