Some hard-hitting staff moves are happening at banks in Asia Pacific, as the dust raised by Covid 19 pandemic settles.

Please click here to access our coverage of the SRP Asia Pacific conference, which was held on 15 and 16 June.

Citi has split its client coverage across three business lines covering all asset classes for flow and non-flow business in Apac. The moves come as the cross-asset solution team sees gross volume of structured products on equity and hybrid underlyings in the region rise 3.1x in 2020 compared with 2019

Jennifer Wong, head of Apac private banks, will focus on Asean and private banks. Young Yoon, head of Korea sales, will cover North Asia while Victor Cheng from multi asset group will oversee Citi private bank, the US bank’s internal client channel. In addition, Citi will overlay each pillar to define low touch or transactional driven activities versus high touch or project driven activities, according to an internal memo signed by Cyrille Troublaiewitch and Sue Lee, Asia co-heads of equity derivatives sales and multi asset group on 10 June and seen by SRP.

UK financial solutions provider Mariana has created an ESG structured product linked to green bonds

Société Générale (SG) has promoted Sylvain Cartier and Alexandre Fleury as co-heads of global markets activities. They replace Jean-François Grégoire who has parted ways with the French bank to ‘pursue new projects outside’ the bank in the context of the implementation of its new strategic roadmap in global banking and investor solutions. Cartier was appointed head of credit, fixed income & currencies in 2019, while Fleury joined SG as head of equities and equity derivatives in Q2 2018. They will retain their existing roles, and report to Slawomir Krupa, head of global banking and investor solutions, going forward. They also become members of SG’s management committee.

On the product front, Barclays Bank has launched the Pacer iPath Gold Trendpilot ETNs which tracks the performance of the Pacer Barclays Gold Trendpilot Total Return Index. The index is calculated on a total return basis and is intended to reflect the performance over time of a dynamic allocation strategy by taking 100%, 50% or 0% notional exposure to the Barclays Gold 3 Month Deferred Index Excess Return on a daily basis based on three specified signals that reference the short-term and long-term performance of the Gold Index and the return that corresponds to the weekly announced interest rate for specified 3-month US Treasury bills.

UK financial solutions provider Mariana has created an ESG structured product linked to green bonds. The Mariana ESG Green Bond UK Kick Out Plan is an eight-year autocall structure which will mature early paying a seven percent return if the MSCI UK Sustainable Select 50 3.5% Decrement Index is above its strike level at any annual observation date.

Staying in the ESG sphere, Société Genérale has issued an ESG fund-linked swap for a local securities house as well as FX forwards integrated with a sustainability-related KPI for a corporate client in South Korea. With a notional of KRW20 billion (US$17.8m), the swap tracks the performance of an ESG fixed income mutual fund - the Allianz Euro Credit SRI, which allows the counterparty’s client (a pension fund) to gain upside participation when the underlying appreciates while retaining full principal through a derivative-linked bond.

Vontobel has reached an agreement with financial technology and services provider Avaloq to integrate its structured products multi-issuer platform Deritrade into Avaloq Wealth - a suite of digital wealth management platforms launched in 2020. The move aimed at increasing Deritrade’s reach will enable Avaloq Wealth’s clients to use the entire structured products offering available on the platform from the start of 2022.

The Index Standard, which provides index rating and forecasting services, has announced coverage of standard and risk control indices built into fixed-income annuities (FIAs) and registered index linked annuities (Rilas). The ratings system is the first of its kind and will cover 150 indices used in the FIA and Rila markets, as well as benchmarks underlying selected exchange-traded funds that have also been deployed in the US retirement space.

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