Asia moves: SFC names new chairman, LCH hires regional head, and more

Latest job changes across industry

Hong Kong’s financial regulator appoints former PwC tax accountant as new chairman

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has appointed Tim Lui Tim-leung chairman for a term of three years. Lui will succeed Carlson Tong, who is stepping down having chaired the regulator for six years. Lui was a former tax partner at PwC and is currently a senior adviser at the accounting firm. He will leave his advisory role before taking up the chairman post at the SFC.

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LCH has hired Kate Birchall as head of its Asia-Pacific business. She replaces Marcus Robinson, who has relocated to London as the clearing house’s head of group business development and will report to Daniel Maguire, chief executive of LCH Group. Birchall is based in Sydney and reports to LCH chief executive Martin Pluves. She is responsible for the firm’s business in the Asia-Pacific region, including its existing over-the-counter derivatives clearing operations in Sydney and Tokyo. Birchall joins from National Australia Bank, where she was most recently head of portfolio optimisation and collateral. Prior to joining NAB, she was a director at KPMG and held various roles at ANZ, CIBC and Lloyds.

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HSBC has appointed Allegra Berman and Richard Godfrey as global co-heads of HSBC Securities Services (HSS). Berman and Godfrey will report to Samir Assaf, chief executive of the lenders’ global banking and markets unit. Godfrey has been the acting head of HSS since the death of Cian Burke in May. He joined HSBC in 2004 from what was then Mellon and has held a variety of senior roles within HSS. In 2011, he was named global chief operating officer for the business. Berman joined HSBC from UBS in 2013 as head of global banking’s public sector group, before taking on the additional responsibility of head of global banking’s financial institutions group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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BNP Paribas has bolstered its Asia prime brokerage team with the hire of Ginney Cheok in Singapore. Cheok, who will report to Carl Davey, head of Asia-Pacific prime brokerage sales, is responsible for the origination of new business in cash prime brokerage, synthetic financing and foreign exchange prime brokerage from clients located in Singapore. Previously, Cheok held senior client-facing roles at Citi and Morgan Stanley. The bank has also hired Charles Bennett in London as head of prime brokerage sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Bennett previously held senior sales and client-facing roles at Citi, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

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State Street Corporation has named Michele Hardeman head of global markets for Asia-Pacific. Hardeman, who has relocated to Hong Kong from Boston, previously served as head of foreign exchange sales for State Street Global Markets. In her new role, she reports to Asia-Pacific chief executive Wai-Kwong Seck and Lou Maiuri, global head of global markets. She joined State Street in 1998 and was head of foreign exchange sales for Australia prior to her move to Boston in 2011, where she took on the same position for the Americas. Hardeman became head of foreign exchange sales in 2015.

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State Street Corporation has also named Qi Wang as Asia-Pacific head of research for State Street Associates, which develops risk, investor behaviour and economic indicators, as well as investable indexes, for institutional investors. In this newly created role, Wang will be responsible for developing and expanding State Street Associates’ regional research capabilities and investable indexes. She joins from EDHEC Infra, where she was head of risk modelling and led the development of risk and portfolio construction models. Prior to that, she was a quantitative analyst at JP Morgan and a senior risk analyst at Standard Chartered.

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Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank has created two dedicated teams: acquisition finance and advisory Asia, and funds coverage. Jean-Yves Korenian has been named head of acquisition finance and advisory Asia. Korenian will provide holistic capital structure and rating advisory services to Crédit Agricole CIB’s clients in the region. He is based in Hong Kong and reports to Christophe Cretot, head of debt origination and advisory Asia-Pacific. Luyi Shen has been named head of funds coverage, with the aim of strengthening the bank’s commercial footprint with investment funds, including private equity funds, infrastructure funds and the investment arms of pensions funds. He will report to Francois Martin, senior country officer for Hong Kong.

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Grasshopper, a Singapore-based proprietary trading firm, has hired Rebecca Weinrauch as chief operating officer. She will oversee Grasshopper’s growth as a liquidity provider and ensure operational excellence across the company. Weinrauch has more than 20 years’ experience of building out financial services platforms and was most recently general counsel for Asia-Pacific at KCG Holdings, a market-maker and liquidity provider. Prior to that, she held a variety senior executive legal counsel and compliance positions at Bank of America, Prudential Financial and Credit Suisse.

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Natixis has hired Kenneth Ho and Joe Zhao to strengthen its corporate coverage efforts in China. Ho joins Natixis as head of corporate coverage for South China. Based in Hong Kong, he will report to Sukhdeep Sandhu, head of corporate coverage for Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. Prior to joining Natixis, Ho worked for various financial institutions, including Standard Chartered and Royal Bank of Scotland. Zhao has been appointed head of corporate coverage for central and eastern China. He joined Natixis in 2016, having previously worked at ANZ Shanghai Branch.