Coutts, the UK private bank, has hired a team of four for its Middle East business, to focus on wealthy non-resident Indians in the region.

Coutts, the UK private bank, has hired a team of four for its Middle East business, to focus on wealthy non-resident Indians in the region.

Rishi Mansukhani joins the bank as executive director, from HSBC’s private banking division, where he was head of Western Gulf, and managed a team of two bankers and two support staff. Prior to joining HSBC in 2011, Mansukhani was also an executive director in the wealth management division of Goldman Sachs. He has also worked as a private banker at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch Dubai. He will co-lead the NRI team in Dubai.
 
Mahesh Ram joins Coutts as a director, with 17 years in the banking industry. He was until recently a private banker at Dutch lender ABN Amro. For three years prior to his appointment at ABN Amro, Ram worked as a private banker at UAE-based Mashreq Bank. Previous to that, Ram spent 10 years working in asset management in Bangalore and Chennai, India.
 
Jai Prakash Paliwal joins as a director from ICICI Bank where he was a vice president, managing a team of five relationship managers. Paliwal joined ICICI in 1998 and worked his way up through various roles.
 
Amit Tyagi joins as a vice president from HSBC’s private banking division, where he was an associate director. Prior to that, Tyagi was a senior associate vice president and relationship manager in the wealth management division of Kotak Mahindra Bank in New Delhi, India, and a relationship manager at Citibank in India. 

The UK bank said that the new quartet will precede plans to hire additional staff across the region this year. Coutts has three offices in the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha.  Coutts announced last year its plans to make 20 additional appointments over the next year, 15 of which will be based in Dubai, which acts as the hub of Coutts’ Middle East activities.
 
Ranjit Khanna, head of South East Asia & Global NRI at Coutts, said: “The NRI business is a key part of our growth strategy. Coutts was one of the first private banks to focus on South Asians and NRIs and over the past 12 years. The Middle East is an important region for the NRI business, and I am confident that this additional expertise will play a significant role in delivering our growth agenda in this market.”