Chicago-headquartered Northern Trust has named Wim van Ooijen as its new country head for the Netherlands, promoting him from his previous post as head of the bank’s Dutch relationship management team.

In his new role van Ooijen succeeds Eric Pouwels, who has been appointed director of strategic development for EMEA. As country head van Ooijen assumes responsibility for asset servicing business development, sales and client activities across the Netherlands and will also serve as the primary contact for the country’s regulators, Northern Trust said in a statement.

“The Netherlands continues to be a key market for Northern Trust... Wim has a wealth of experience in supporting the sophisticated needs of our business in the region and we are delighted to promote him to lead our Dutch operations as we drive future growth,” said Penelope Biggs, head of Northern Trust’s institutional investor group, EMEA.

Northern Trust has been servicing clients in the Netherlands since 1985 and in 2006 the bank opened an office in Amsterdam which provides asset servicing and asset management to institutional investors and investment managers.

In other recent developments, earlier this week the bank announced that the China Banking Regulatory Commission had approved its application for a branch licence in Beijing.

The Beijing office will provide global custody, accounting, performance measurement and investment mandate compliance monitoring services to clients in China. The licence also allows the firm to provide client services directly from the Beijing office, rather than from Hong Kong or Singapore. The new office comes at a high time for Northern Trust, which recorded an 80 per cent rise in assets under custody in the Asia Pacific region in 2009.