UBS Warburg poaches Merrill Lynch veteran in Asia

UBS Warburg has snared Christopher Lee, a seven-year veteran of Merrill Lynch, to head it intermediary desk for equity risk management products.

Based in Hong Kong, Lee will lead the bank's intermediary desk to market structured equity products, such as equity-linked notes, to private banks and brokerage houses, according to Chi-Won Yoon, managing director and head of equity risk management products sales at the bank in Hong Kong.

Lee joins UBS Warburg from Merrill Lynch where he has been since in 1995. He began his career with Merrill Lynch in New York, where he marketed debt derivatives, later moving to Hong Kong working on equity-linked notes based on US and Asian equities and equity-linked indices.

Most recently, Lee was responsible for developing Merrill Lynch's distribution desk in San Francisco focussing on equity monetisation and hedging transactions for West Coast international private clients, as well as managing US underlying transactions for Asian private banking clients.

Lee will directly report to Yoon.