SWISS Bank Corporation (SBC) has announced a major local expansion programme - in spite of low turnover and slumping prices on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and cancelled bond mandates, which have raised fears of a big shake out of jobs in the financial services industry.
The plan will double the size of its Exchange Square office, and see an SBC director and entire department moving to Hong Kong, where 150 snd all Asian debt-equity origination and syndication activities will be shifted here from London.
Wayne Peters, SBC's local chief executive officer, said the group planned to add 150 staff in the Asia region this year and almost all of them would be in the Hong Kong office where the bank conducts shares and derivatives trading, investment banking, private banking and corporate finance. Mr Peters said staff would be added in all areas.
The bank is to double the size of its local office by leasing three floors in One Exchange Square. Mr Peters declined to comment on the price the bank was paying for space in Hong Kong's most expensive office building where space has changed hands for $100 a square foot.
''We are a long-standing tenant and we are taking three floors,'' said Mr Peters.
As part of the same plan, the head of foreign exchange options, Bill Johnson, has already moved from Chicago to Singapore while two senior appointments have been made to the investment banking division in Hong Kong. Mr Hung Shih and Mr Patrick Sun have been named as executive directors with responsibility for China and Hong Kong respectively.