JPMorgan Chase & Co plans to double the number of private bankers serving Chinese clients from Singapore over the next two years, signaling its ambition to tap growth from Asia’s second-largest wealth market.
The US bank has more than a dozen relationship managers serving Chinese residents and those on the mainland from the city-state, said James Wey (魏志傑), the new head of Southeast Asia private banking.
“With rapid wealth creation in China, there is a need for insightful advice around how to manage the newfound wealth,” he said in an interview.
Photo: Reuters
JPMorgan, ranked seventh among private banks in Asia excluding onshore China, competes with Credit Suisse Group AG and Morgan Stanley in attracting Chinese entrepreneurs who become billionaires after listing their companies’ stocks.
Singapore is popular among the world’s rich to park funds, buy property and set up family offices. While the New York-based bank has a large team of wealth managers in Hong Kong, Singapore is the only Asian center where clients can book assets.
“Singapore is a natural hub for wealth management because of the very clear and investor-friendly regulation,” Wey said. “The wealthy, not just from China, but all over the world, view the country as a stable hub.”
The China team is the latest addition to JPMorgan Private Bank in Singapore, which has traditionally focused on local clients and those in Indonesia, and has more than 50 relationship managers, Wey said.
Last week, Wey also announced plans to merge the team serving the Indian diaspora with those handling Singapore residents, effective from today, he said.
While the private bank would expand all of its teams in Singapore, the rate of growth for the China group would be faster given that it is the smallest and was set up less than two years ago, he said.
“Many large Chinese companies are using Singapore as their international headquarters,” Wey said when asked about target clients. “With that come a lot of senior people who have concentrated wealth holdings. They look at how to build that in a smart way for generations to come.”
Among major Chinese firms building up in Singapore are Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動).
JPMorgan’s balance sheet enables the private bank to grow its relationship with clients via lending, as well as providing other market activities, Wey said. Last year, the bank said it was starting a trust entity in Singapore.
The number of millionaires in China grew 11 percent to 1.3 million last year, a faster rate than Japan, home to 3.4 million millionaires, according to a report published in July by Capgemini SE.
Wey moved to Singapore in August to take on the current role from Hong Kong, where he was market manager for Taiwan from 2018. He joined the bank in 2008. Before that he was a management consultant with McKinsey & Co.
UNWANTED ATTENTION: In the past two months, the automaker has made headlines, with a Chinese military ban of its vehicles and a protest at an expo Electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc, facing scrutiny in China over safety and customer service complaints, is boosting its engagement with regulators and beefing up its government relations team, industry sources said. Tesla’s change of strategy leading to more behind-the-scenes interaction with policymakers in Beijing compared with relatively little previously shows the seriousness with which the US automaker views the setbacks in its second-biggest market. TALKING SHOP It also comes at a time when China is trying to regulate large and powerful private companies, especially in the technology sector, on concerns about their market dominance. As they do elsewhere, regulators in China, the world’s biggest
Dell Technologies Inc has agreed to sell its Boomi cloud business to private equity firms Francisco Partners and TPG in a cash deal valued at US$4 billion, as part of efforts by chief executive officer Michael Dell to trim down the PC maker. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year, the companies said in a statement on Sunday without providing additional details of the terms. Dow Jones had earlier reported that the companies were near a deal. Boomi specializes in integrating different cloud platforms for companies and has more than 15,000 customers. Dell agreed to acquire the company for
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) start-up Nio Inc (蔚來) reported a narrower first-quarter loss, while warning that a global chip shortage would keep a lid on deliveries. The Shanghai-based company posted a net loss of 451 million yuan (US$68.8 million) in the three months ended March 31, compared with 1.69 billion yuan a year earlier, it said in a statement. It also marked an improvement on the 1.39 billion yuan net loss it posted in the fourth quarter of last year. Revenue rose to 7.98 billion yuan, beating estimates of 7.16 billion yuan. Nio delivered 20,060 vehicles in the quarter, a 423 percent increase from
Intel Corp wants 8 billion euros (US$9.7 billion) in public subsidies toward building a semiconductor factory in Europe, chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger was cited as saying on Friday, as the region seeks to reduce its reliance on imports amid a shortage of supplies. The pitch is the first time that Gelsinger has publicly put a figure on how much state aid he would want, as Intel campaigns to take on Asian rivals in contract manufacturing. “What we’re asking from both the US and the European governments is to make it competitive for us to do it here, compared to in Asia,”
RSS