Pioneer Investments is a unit of Italy-listed UniCredit and oversees around $259 billion of client money.

"London is one of the natural choices for this base situated between the rapidly growing markets of Asia to the East and Latin America to the West and in the same time zone as The Middle East and Africa. Further, London's position as a leading investment centre, will increase the opportunity to grow the business, through the ability to attract a wider universe of talented individuals to further develop our capabilities, in this important segment of the global markets," the firm said in an emailed statement to this publication.

"Our investment activities in Singapore will be relocated and managed from the London investment centre. With this move, Singapore will be developed as a primary sales hub for Asia, focusing on all sales and distribution activities covering local, regional and global distributors and institutions. Furthermore, it will be the base from which we will increase our market penetration in Taiwan and Japan and look at other market entrance strategies in Asia, which remains a key market to our overall business strategy," it continued.

"It is important to emphasise that the key senior portfolio managers responsible for these will remain the same and over time their teams will be strengthened by tapping into the talent pool available in London. There will be no impact on the management of the portfolios as a result of this change in location," Pioneer added.

“We are presently discussing with the affected individuals the best way to manage the process and the effects on their roles,” Pioneer is quoted as having said by Bloomberg, without specifying the number of employees affected. “The key senior portfolio managers responsible for the investment strategies currently managed from Singapore will remain the same.”

Pioneer has 30 employees in Singapore. Pioneer said the city-state will remain its primary sales hub and that Asia was a vital region for its business.

The move would represent something of an exception to a more general trend of banks, wealth managers and other financial institutions sending more staff and operations to Asia, as in the case of HSBC, for example. This week, the Merrill Lynch/Capgemini World Wealth Report 2011 showed that Asia has overtaken Europe in the numbers and wealth of its high net worth population.