Last year saw scores of staff leave ANZ in Singapore – some of their own accord, others because of layoffs and the sale of the firm’s Asian retail and wealth unit to DBS. CEO Shayne Elliott, who took the reins in January 2016, is scaling back several of ANZ’s Asian operations.
ANZ’s Singapore headcount fell by 300 to about 1,900 people in the 12 months to end-September, although the Republic remains a key regional hub for the bank.
Fortunately, many of those who have departed ANZ in recent months have managed to find senior roles elsewhere in Singapore, according to the public profiles that they’ve posted online. Here’s where some of them have ended up.
Glenn Maguire, vice president, Visa Business and Economic Insights Asia Pacific
Maguire was ANZ’s chief economist for Asia Pacific between June 2013 and September 2016, according to his public profile. He authored several of the bank’s flagship publications including ‘Caged Tiger: The Transformation of the Asian Financial System’. In his 27-year career Maguire has held several senior public and private sector economist roles, including chief Asia economist for Societe Generale. At Visa he is tasked with “deepening client engagement and thought leadership in the payments and consumer economy in the Asia Pacific region”.
Jodie Arthur, regional head of financial crime compliance, ASEAN and South Asia, Standard Chartered
Arthur was an ANZ veteran, having first joined the firm’s Melbourne headquarters in 2004 as a senior audit manager. She moved into a generalist compliance role four years later and by 2013 was specialising in financial crime. Arthur transferred to Singapore in 2014 as head of financial crime and divisional money laundering. She’s been leading Stan Chart’s regional financial crime team for the past five months.
Davin Wong, executive director, team head, Julius Baer
ANZ sold its Asian wealth business to DBS last year, but Wong instead chose to join Julius Baer in September. He was one of about 100 new private bankers that the Swiss firm took on in an aggressive 2016 hiring drive. Wong started his career as a personal banker at OCBC and Citi in the early 2000s and then worked for Standard Chartered, HSBC, DBS and UOB. He joined ANZ in 2014 as market head for its Asia private bank.
Akhilesh Sethi, Asia head of MNC sales and Singapore head of corporate sales, Crédit Agricole
Sethi moved to Singapore from India in 2009 and joined Barclays, where he rose to become head of multinational corporates FX and rates for Asia Pacific. He went to ANZ in July 2015 as director of FX institutional corporate sales, but stayed there for just 14 months. Sethi is now leading Asia FX and rates coverage for Crédit Agricole’s large global clients in Asia, according to his profile.
Nicolas Le Clerc, executive director, head of project advisory, Nomura
Le Clerc, a senior project finance banker, had been with ANZ for 10 years when he left in 2016. Most recently he was in charge of transaction origination and business development for specialised finance in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. He has lived in Singapore since 2000 when he joined Credit Suisse as an analyst. His new role sees him working in Nomura’s Asia infrastructure project office.
Ashish Mittal, director, SACAC Counselling
Mittal was global co-head of commodities at ANZ between 2012 and 2016, according to his public profile. Before that he held two senior positions at Standard Chartered: global head of commodity sales, and head of sales for financial markets, South and South East Asia. Mittal has now left the banking sector. He’s become the director of SACAC Counselling in Singapore, an organisation which provides counselling and psychotherapy support to individuals, couples and families.
Sabith Venkitachalapathy, cloud architect, Alibaba Cloud
Venkitachalapathy began his banking technology career in 2006 when he joined Deutsche Bank in Singapore as a software consultant. He then worked for Merrill Lynch and Barclays, where he became a VP. Venkitachalapathy came to ANZ in 2012 as an associate director in global markets technology, specialising in front-office risk and pricing solutions. He left the Australian firm last year, but not to join a rival bank. He’s now leading Alibaba’s efforts to target the cloud needs of the finance sector.
Edwin Chew, associate, debt capital markets, Deutsche Bank
Junior ANZ staff have also been finding work elsewhere. Chew worked as an analyst in the Singapore DCM origination team at Barclays from 2012 to 2015 before moving to ANZ as a DCM associate. He stayed with the Australian bank for just 15 months, however, and is now doing a similar role at Deutsche, according to his online profile.
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