Northern Trust has appointed Ee Fang Chen as sales director for its asset management operations in the Asia Pacific region.

Chen brings over 12 years of financial services experience to Northern Trust Global Investments, the Chicago-headquartered asset management unit. He joins the company from Martin Currie, where he was the business development director for the Singapore office. In his new post, he is charged with helping build Northern Trust's client base in Asia and he will report to Fifi Ting, the head of sales and client services in Asia Pacific ex-Japan.

"We look forward to building on NTGI's growth in Asia Pacific as [Cheng] brings investment solutions leveraging our core capabilities in global index, active fixed income, and manager-of-managers strategies to a new group of large, sophisticated investors in South East Asia," Kevin Hardy, senior vice president and regional executive for NTGI Asia Pacific.

In recent times Northern Trust has been busily building up its staff roster in the fast-growing Asia Pacific market. Over the last three years, the company has grown its Asia Pacific staff numbers to over 2,000; the bank has offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangalore, and Melbourne.