Weekly roundup of people news, July 29
UBS AM names head of Asia-Pacific fixed income
Switzerland's UBS Asset Management has hired Hayden Briscoe from US fund house AllianceBernstein as head of fixed income for Asia Pacific. He started in on July 26.
Briscoe has taken over the role from Anne Anderson, who was doubling up as UBS’s head of Asia Pacific fixed income and managing the company’s Australian fixed income operations. Anderson will now be more involved in the banks fixed income investment committee.
Based in Hong Kong, Briscoe reports to John Dugenske, global head of fixed income.
A UBS spokeswoman said Briscoe would be an “add-on on top of all UBS Asset Management’s current managers”, including Ashley Perrott, the bank’s veteran pan-Asia head of fixed income. She added that UBS Asset Management intended to add more staff for its China strategy, but declined to comment further.
Briscoe left AllianceBernstein in April. A spokeswoman said existing team members had assumed his responsibilities, but did not respond to a query about who would now run the team.
DBS PB hires Poon from UBS, promotes Lua
Singapore's DBS Private Bank has promoted Lawrence Lua to deputy head from head of South and Southeast Asia and has hired Joseph Poon from UBS Wealth Management as head of Southeast Asia.
Lua has been at DBS for five years and continues to report to Tan Su Shan, group head of consumer banking and wealth management.
Poon will report to Lua in his new role. At UBS, he had been Southeast Asia head of ultra-high-net-worth clients and also ran its family office division in the region. UBS declined to comment on whether he had been replaced.
Vivian Chan to replace Desmond Liu at StanChart PB
Standard Chartered Private Bank has confirmed Vivian Chan has joined as head of North Asia and Greater China. She will replace Desmond Liu, who has held the role since 2012 and will retire from the bank at the end of this year.
Chan was previously North Asia head of Barclays’ wealth management division. Her move follows the acquisition of the latter's Asia wealth business by Singapore’s OCBC.
Chan will rejoin Didier von Daeniken, previously Asia head of wealth management at Barclays, who is now global head of private banking and wealth management at StanChart, as reported.
Chan had joined Barclays in July 2013 from Credit Suisse, where she was market leader for Greater China.
Srinivas Siripurapu is another executive to have joined StanChart from Barclays. Early this month he became head of private banking for Asean and South Asia and StanChart’s first global head for non-resident Indian business.
Siripurapu was head of Southeast Asia, global South Asian community and Africa offshore at Barclays and resigned in January.
Temasek names head of sustainability and stewardship
Veteran media executive Robin Hu is to join Singapore's Temasek International in December as joint head of its recently established sustainability and stewardship group.
Hu takes up his duties on December 1 and will report to Temasek International chief executive Lee Theng Kiat. He will serve alongside Cheo Hock Kuan, who has headed the division since its inauguration in April.
A spokesman said Temasek International's policy was to have joint heads for each of its groups.
Hu will leave Hong Kong's SCMP Publishing, where he was CEO and helped coordinate the takeover of Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, in which Temasek Holdings is a shareholder. Hu will remain on the board of SCMP, the newspaper reported.
Hu previously worked for Singapore Press Holdings and the Singapore Economic Development Board.
StanChart creates securities services business line
Standard Chartered Bank has named Margaret Harwood-Jones as global head of securities services, a newly created business line in its transaction banking division.
She was previously head of investors and intermediaries in transaction banking and will retain those duties.
Based in Singapore, Harwood-Jones reports to George Nast, global head of sales and client management for transaction banking. She took up the role on July 26.
StanChart said it had carved out the securities services business line as a way of integrating sales, product, service, technology and operations under the transaction banking umbrella.
Harwood-Jones joined the UK bank in January 2013 from BNP Paribas, where she had been global head of client segments, asset managers and alternative investments based in London.
First State hires multi-asset portfolio manager
First State Investments, part of Australia’s Colonial First State Global Asset Management, has named Kelley Foo as a portfolio manager in its multi-asset solutions team in Singapore.
Foo joins from Singapore-based Nuvest Capital and will focus on proprietary research, asset allocation and portfolio management for First State’s multi-asset fund and strategies in Asia.
She was previously a portfolio manager responsible for multi-asset strategies at boutique house Nuvest, which did not respond to a request for comment. Before that she was with Singapore’s UOB Asset Management.
Foo started in the role on July 18 and reports to Epco van de Lende, head of multi-asset solutions based in Singapore.
Foo’s appointment follows the departure of Petr Kocourek’s last year, bringing the team back up its previous size. Kocourek joined Wellington Management in Singapore in January according to his LinkedIn page.
First State’s multi-asset solutions team has nine members across Singapore, Australia and London. There are no plans to hire further staff at this point.
Julius Baer adds net 47 RMs
Swiss bank Julius Baer said it had appointed 200 relationship managers in the first half of 2016, a net increase of 47 RMs, with half of the new hires coming in Asia.
The bank has recruited aggressively in the region in recent months, with a substantial number coming from rival Credit Suisse.
The hires take the total number of RMs to 1,284 and reflected a strategic decision to accelerate hiring to build market share, said chief executive Boris Collardi.
The number of net hires is already up on the 40 RMs hired last year, the bank said.
Rainsford moves to GAM from Man Group
Swiss asset manager GAM has recruited Tim Rainsford from UK hedge fund firm Man Group as group head of distribution.
Rainsford will be based in London and will report to group chief executive Alexander Friedman. He will take up his duties on January 1 next year.
He is taking over from Craig Wallis, who will step down from GAM's management board and give up his day-to-day responsibilities on December 31, before leaving the company in early 2017.
Rainsford had served as global co-head of sales and marketing at Man Group and was a member of its executive committee. He took up the role in 2013, after joining Man in Australia in 2003, since when he has also served as Asia head for five years.
A Man Group spokesman said Steven Desmyter, who has been with the group since 2002, would step up to head of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and join the executive committee to replace Rainsford. Desmyter had been managing director of GLG Partners.
Other people news reported on AsianInvestor in the past week: