Barclays, the UK-based bank, has bolstered its Hong Kong wealth and investment management unit with the appointment of a market head.

Rickie Chan assumes his new role in 16 August and will report to Pakorn Boonya-kurkul, head of wealth management for North Asia. Chan was previously an executive director at Goldman Sachs, where he led a team of bankers serving ultra high net worth clients in Hong Kong. He worked for 16 years at Goldman Sachs, most of which involved UHNW affairs.

The appointment complements Barclays' growth strategy in the China, Taiwan and North Asia regions. Under the leadership of Boonya-kurkul, who became wealth head in May 2011, Barclays has been aggressively adding to its strength, hiring Carol Chen and Januar Tjandra in December as Greater China market heads based in Singapore and Hong Kong, respectively. The bank has since added eight more relationship bankers for the two locations.

"With China's emergence as the world's largest exporter and with RMB trade settlement continuing to gain traction and prominence, Hong Kong's position as an RMB financial hub will further grow. Our recent expansion of RMB trading capabilities in both our Singapore and Hong Kong booking centres is a significant step in capturing the growth of wealth in the region," said Boonya-kurkul.

Barclays said in November that it is focusing on Greater China as part of its overall Asia-Pacific markets strategy in 2012, as it aims to more than double its assets under management in the next three years. China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are said to be experiencing double-digit annual percentage growth in the number of wealthy individuals. At present, around 50 per cent of bankers representing the firm in Hong Kong are at the managing and director level.