Standard Chartered PLC plans to hire about 1,800 people for its global trading and underwriting operations over the next three years to more than double revenue from those businesses.
The expansion from the current 1,700 employees at its Financial Markets unit is part of a goal to boost net revenue from those operations to about US$10 billion by 2014 from US$4.4 billion last year, division head Leonard Feder said in an interview on Thursday in Singapore.
“This is just the beginning,” said Feder, who joined Standard Chartered in July 2007 after spending 11 years at Bear Stearns Cos, where he was last the co-head of its prime brokerage unit. “We’re just scratching the surface on what the opportunities are.”
Standard Chartered is challenging firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc, the Wall Street bank that got US$38 billion in revenue from investment banking and trading last year.
The London-based lender, which gets most of its profit from Asia, plans to expand in underwriting securities denominated in the Chinese currency and boost trading on behalf of clients in equities, commodities and currencies, Feder said.
Offshore yuan-denominated products is “probably No. 1 on our list,” Feder said.
Standard Chartered arranged McDonald’s Corp’s sale of yuan bonds in Hong Kong in August, the first by a foreign non-financial company.
Standard Chartered is working with several funds and issuers to spur trading in so-called “dim sum” bonds, said Sundeep Bhandari, the bank’s head of global markets for Northeast Asia.
Average daily turnover may rise as much as six-fold to 300 million yuan (US$45 million) by the end of next year, from 50 million yuan this month, it estimates.
Feder said he had looked at about 15 potential acquisition targets in the last 12 months, without identifying them, adding that he’s interested in purchases in Asia that would bolster the bank’s position in financial products that are traded over exchanges.
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