Lombard Odier, the Swiss private banking group, has appointed private banker Stéphane Ulcakar as senior vice president in its Moscow representative office.

Ulcakar was latterly a principal at Boston Consulting Group, working there since 2010, having previously worked for the consultancies Bain & Co and Corporate Value Associates for three and nine years respectively.

Moscow aside, this year Lombard Odier has made much of its ambitions for the Middle East. Back in May the Geneva-headquartered firm appointed four relationship managers in the UAE as part of ongoing expansion plans in the GCC region. In July Arnaud Leclercq, a partner in charge of the region, said that the bank plans to double assets under management for Middle Eastern clients to SFr10 billion to SFr15 billion (around $15.7 billion) over five years.

Elsewhere, in March Lombard Odier announced a tie-up with the Australian wealth manager JBWere to tap the demand for portfolio diversification from Antipodean high net worth investors. 

The partnership will allow clients of JBWere, which is 80.1 per cent owned by National Australia Bank and 19.9 per cent backed by Goldman Sachs, to trade internationally across a range of asset classes and access FX hedging, custody and reporting. Meanwhile Lombard Odier, a seventh generation family-owned bank, will benefit through being able to enter the Australian market through the domestic network base of JBWere.

Established in 1796, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch has some SFr145 billion in assets under management and 1,800 employees, as at end-2011.