Peng Wensheng joins Citic Securities

Peng Wensheng has joined Citic Securities as global chief economist and head of research, according to an internal memo seen by FinanceAsia.

The move confirms a report by FinanceAsia in October, which reported that Peng would leave his role as chief economist at CICC, the Chinese investment bank, and be replaced by Liang Hong.

At Citic, China’s largest brokerage by assets, Peng will be responsible for the research team, promoting macroeconomic research in both domestic and international markets. Peng is based in Hong Kong.

Also, he will drive the cooperation with the research and institutional sales teams of CLSA, a research-driven agency broker acquired by Citic Securities in July, 2013.

Peng worked at CICC since 2010 when his predecessor Ha Jiming left to take up a post as managing director in the investment banking department at Goldman Sachs. Prior to CICC, Peng had served at International Monetary Fund (Washington DC), Hong Kong Monetary Authority as well as at Barclays as chief economist and head of China economic research.

Peng attained his PhD degree in economics and the Master in money, banking and finance from the University of Birmingham in UK and a Bachelor degree in economics from Nankai University in China.

Citic Securities ranked the ninth among all banks in Asia (ex-Japan) investment banking revenue during the past year as of November 24, 2014, Dealogic data shows. The top eight banks were all foreign banks.

Liang started her role at CICC in October and remains head of research, according to the bank’s announcement at the time.

She joined CICC in 2008 from Goldman where she served as chief China economist and co-head of Asian Pacific economic research since 2003. Before Goldman, she worked at the International Monetary Fund as an economist from 1998 to 2003. She obtained her PhD in economics from Georgetown University.