People Moves
Bank of Singapore Hires Senior HSBC And Macquarie Duo

Bank of Singapore has made two senior hires from rivals HSBC Private Bank and Macquarie as the battle for senior talent grows fierce in Asia.
Richard Jerram starts as chief economist for the bank, responsible for formulating the Bank of Singapore's macro-economic views and shaping its investment strategy in Asia and the emerging markets, the bank said in a statement. He reports to Marc Van de Walle, head of product management and will work closely with Hou Wey Fook, chief investment officer.
Jerram was previously head of Asian economics for Macquarie Capital Securities and has over 20 years of experience. Before Macquarie he was chief economist for Japan until 2009 and worked at ING's Asian equity business until it was acquired by Macquarie in 2004.
Bank of Singapore also named Koh Siew Kim as an investment counsellor. She joins from HSBC Private Bank where she was senior director of investment counselling in Hong Kong. She was previously based at UBS as executive director for investment advisory. At BoS she will work closely with the South East Asia marketing and product management teams and relationship managers.
Yesterday HSBC hired Lionel Kwok from Standard Chartered to head up its investment counselling team in Asia - a new role. Private banks in the region are keen to expand their investment counselling businesses - extra layer of investment expertise to support the relationship managers who can often lack in-depth knowledge.
In February HSBC Private Bank hired a global head of investment counselling, Richard Jablonowski, who joined from Merrill Lynch and is based in London.
Switzerland's Credit Suisse last year hired a team of four senior wealth management advisers to sit alongside its relationship managers. Barclays Wealth, the UK private bank, hired Craig Lewis as head of investment advisory. Lewis said he planned to “invest heavily” in the bank’s investment advisory team.
Lloyds Private Bank, Citi Private Bank, UBS and Union Bancaire Privee are all reportedly bulking up their teams.