Vincent Wong, a former managing director in RBS’ debt capital markets (DCM) team, has joined ANZ in the newly created role of head of Greater China DCM.
Wong, who started at the bank this month, reports to Jimmy Choi, who is ANZ’s head of DCM for Asia. He is based in Hong Kong.
The move comes three months after Wong left RBS following seven years at the bank. At RBS, Wong was responsible for origination and execution for the bank’s cross-border DCM transactions across corporates and financial institutions in Asia. His coverage included investment grade, high yield and hybrid capital security transactions in G3 and regional currencies.
He joined RBS in 2007 as an executive director after spending 10 years at Deutsche Bank in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore.
RBS departures
At the time of his resignation, sources with knowledge of RBS’ DCM desk said that Wong’s duties expanded to include many of the responsibilities formerly held by Augusto King, RBS’ head of DCM who left the bank in March to join Jefferies in a senior DCM role.
King’s own departure came less than two months after Guy Wylie rejoined RBS in the newly created role of head of primary markets in January 2013. Wylie, who was previously at UBS for five years, also left the bank in August. He recently resurfaced at Australian telecommunications firm Telstra.
The slew of high-level changes at the bank followed a reshuffle in March 2012 which saw Roland Hinterkoerner, who was co-head of DCM with King, become head of corporate advisory for Asia Pacific. His reporting line shifted from John Wade, head of DCM and syndicate in Asia Pacific, to Sanjeev Kumar, the head of corporate advisory.
In May, the bank also announced that executive chairman of RBS for Asia Pacific John McCormack would leave the bank after 17 years. Donald Workman, head of the asset protection scheme unit at the bank, assumed McCormack’s role.
ANZ building up
Meanwhile, ANZ has sought to build up its regional debt team.
In March of 2012, Choi departed his role as head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s (BoA-Merrill) high yield business in Asia to take his current position at ANZ.
Along with him, Kang-Jae Kim, a director for BoA-Merrill in Southeast Asia based in Singapore, and Leonard Ng, a vice president at the bank, also resigned to join ANZ. And one associate and two analysts were also said to have followed the three to ANZ.
And on the loan side, ANZ hired Ray Wong as associate director in the Asian loans sales team in August. He also joined from RBS, where he was a member of the loans team.
Weeks earlier, ANZ hired Troy Bowler as global head of rates investor sales, joining from Barclays.
The appointments come as ANZ has made a more concerted push to expand in Asia, with a focus on China. In May 2012, ANZ announced plans to invest AUD300 million (US$284.3 million) to triple the size of its China network. The bank plans to expand from six branches in the country by 2012 to 26 in five to 10 years.
An ANZ spokesperson could not be reached to comment on Wong’s appointment by press time.