Credit Suisse names Ashra head of Asia debt syndicate

Following the departure of Peter Pellicano in March, Credit Suisse has announced that it will be bringing in Devesh Ashra from its New York office to head the debt syndicate desk in Hong Kong. It has also hired Hital Desai from Goldman Sachs to further add to its debt syndicate capacity.

Desai will join Credit Suisse in July and will be responsible for Asian distribution of developed market credits, excluding sovereigns, supranationals and agencies. He will report directly to Ashra.

Desai resigned from Goldman last week. He has been the sole banker on the Asia debt syndicate desk at the US bank since Ronan McCullough was poached by Morgan Stanley in August last year. A source familiar with the move said no replacement has been identified yet, which means the debt syndicate desk at Goldman is currently unmanned.

Desai has been working on the Asia debt syndicate desk at Goldman for the past two years, and before that he was with the firm in London for another two years, working within fixed income.

Meanwhile, Ashra will transfer to Hong Kong to take up his new role in mid-June. He is currently based in New York, working on the Credit Suisse syndicate desk there. He has worked within the Latin America debt underwriting business, and with US distribution of emerging markets and regional new issues over the past four years.

In his new role he will report functionally to Rob Kay, managing director of US debt syndicate (based in New York), and London-based Chris Tuffey, who is managing director of European syndicate and co-head of the credit capital markets group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea). On a local level, Ashra will report to Alister Moss, Asia-Pacific head of flow rates sales.

The two appointments are a reflection of Credit Suisse's efforts to bolster the manpower within its fixed-income operations. It has earlier said that it is committed to raise its fixed-income headcount in Asia by a further 20% this year. In early May, the bank hired eight people for its fixed-income sales and trading operations in China and in January Carsten Stoehr, head of fixed-income for Asia-Pacific, announced the appointments of Bunt Ghosh and Atsushi Mizuno as joint vice-chairmen for the division in Asia-Pacific.