The deputy chief of Bank of China (Suisse) is jumping ship for Singapore’s DBS Bank, to drive the expansion of its international private banking business.

The deputy chief of Bank of China (Suisse), has been hired by Singapore’s DBS Bank, to drive the recently announced expansion of its international private banking business, this publication has exclusively revealed.

Peter Triggs will join DBS Private Bank in April 2012 as managing director, head of international and head of wealth structuring, based in Singapore.

He reports to Tan Su Shan, group head of wealth management at DBS Bank.

Triggs will relocate from Geneva, where he was most recently deputy CEO and head of international private banking at BoC (Suisse), in the first international private banking office of a Chinese bank outside Asia. He held this role for three years and was previously based at Citi Private Bank for 19 years, latterly as a managing director. From 2001 to 2004, he was head of private banking in Singapore and Malaysia for Citigroup.

It is not yet known who will replace him at Bank of China (Suisse). A spokesman for BoC said: "the bank's internal information is strictly confidential," and declined to comment further. 

Expansion plans

Triggs' move heralds a new era for southeast Asia’s largest lender, which is launching a large-scale expansion into the international markets – a departure from the 44-year old bank’s historically Asian focus.

In an exclusive interview last month, the private bank’s chief operating officer Olivier Crespin, told WealthBriefingAsia that the bank is set to add five senior executives to spearhead growth in EMEA and the US. Triggs will be one of these. 

The new hires will drive its presence overseas with plans to grow its foreign assets under management by a factor of five, reported here.

The international client base currently comprises around 2-3 per cent of the private bank’s $40 billion of assets under management, equating to less than a billion, said Crespin. Within five years Crespin wants to swell this to around $5 billion, in line with bold growth projections for the rest of the franchise. Overall DBS wants to grow wealth management assets to around $51 billion by 2014.

“We have always been focused on Asian clients but now we have some interest in looking at clients from Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America who are keen to invest in Asia's growth,” he said last month.

The new hires will be based in Singapore, covering their respective markets remotely. The first members of the new team recently started. James Tan was hired from Switzerland's Credit Suisse in November, where he spent seven years, most recently as senior vice president of investment consulting. Yann Mocellin joined last month from multi-family office Swiss-Asia Financial Services, where he was a member of the executive management team. Both will cover the EMEA region and are understood to be reporting to Triggs. The bank has also identified two more senior relationship managers who will come on board around May, said Crespin.

Bucking the trend

The international expansion moves against the current trend, as global banks increasingly turn their sights towards Asia. Now from a strong position in the East, DBS is looking West. 

The new focus was spurred by a need from its clients. "The clients we are looking for are typically sophisticated international investors with assets in Europe or US who want to have a bank account in Asia for their business, investments and products in the region. They want alternative access to currencies and Asian stocks, they are familiar with Asia and they want the connectivity throughout their accounts," said Crespin in the interview.

In its full-year 2011 results posted last month, DBS saw net earnings for the year to December 2011 up 15 per cent from the previous year to S$3.04 billion ($2.4 billion), the first time earnings crossed the S$3 billion mark, propelling its total income to a new high of S$7.63 billion.