Erwin Sanft, who joins Standard Chartered fom BNP Paribas, will be based in Hong Kong, reporting to Dave Murray, the head of equity research. Sanft was most recently a chief strategist for Asia equities at BNP and prior to that managed the China research team at CLSA. He brings over 15 years of industry experience to the firm.

In this new role, he will be responsible for directing the value proposition of Standard Chartered's Hong Kong/China product offering across sectors, as well as supplement the regional strategy product with a focus on Hong Kong and China. He will be working closely with the macroeconomics and fixed income currencies and commodities research team.

The primary markets of Standard Chartered's equity research division are Hong Kong, China, India and Singapore. It also maintains coverage of key firms in South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.