Asia syndicate head at UBS moves to global role

UBS has promoted its co-head of equity syndicate and block origination/execution for Asia, Sam Kendall, to head of equity syndicate for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) as well as to a new role as global head of blocks, according to an internal announcement. The appointment is no doubt in recognition of the steady stream of block trades that Kendall and the co-head of Asia syndicate, James Fleming, has been arranging in Asia over the past three years, despite the difficult markets.

As Kendall relocates to London for his new position, Fleming will take over the sole responsibility for the equity syndicate desk in Asia.

Kendall will take over the EMEA syndicate position from Peter Guenthardt, who was promoted to head of equity capital markets for Europe last week. Kendall will report primarily to Guenthardt, although with regard to the global blocks business he will also have a reporting line to Matthew Koder in New York.

Although he will now be based in London, Kendall's role as global head of blocks means that he will continue to be involved in Asian block trades and will thus retain his ties to the region. Whether this means that UBS will strive to place a greater portion of their deals with European investors remains to be seen.

Kendall joined UBS in Australia in 1996 in equities trading and has since worked in New York, London (where he ran the Asia sales trading desk) and Singapore. He moved to Hong Kong in 2006 to set up the bank's blocks franchise and was named co-head of equity syndicate in March 2008 together with Fleming when their predecessor John Sturmey resigned to join ABN AMRO (now Royal Bank of Scotland). According to the internal announcement, Kendall has played an "integral role" in the success of the firm's ECM business in the region.

The Swiss bank topped the league tables for Asia ex-Japan and ex-Australia with regard to IPOs and secondary share sales both in 2007 and 2008, according to data provider Dealogic, and leads the ranking for this year just ahead of Morgan Stanley, which has also been very active on secondary share sell-downs.   

Among the sell-downs it has worked on so far this year are Royal Philips Electronics' exit from Korea's LG Display through a $794 million deal and Bank of America's sale of $2.8 billion worth of its H-shares in China Construction Bank, which ranked as the largest block trade in Hong Kong history. It has also done a number of smaller blocks in the likes of noodle maker Tingyi, Korean metal forging company Hyunjin Materials and its associate Yonghyun Base Material, Renhe Commercial Holdings and  Hanjin Shipping.

But while the blocks business has become ever more important as a revenue driver as the volatile market environment has made it difficult to bring new companies to the market, UBS has also acted as a bookrunner on two of the three Hong Kong IPOs this year that have been greater than $100 million. Most recently, it led, together with Citic Securities and J.P. Morgan, the $1.26 billion IPO for aluminium extrusion company China Zhongwang Holdings. The company fell 5.3% on its debut on Friday to close at HK$6.63 after fixing the IPO price towards the bottom of the range at $7.

The bank is also a joint bookrunner (together with Macquarie, and possibly a third bank which is circling the deal) on the upcoming IPO for Beijing Building Materials Group, a combined property developer and producer of building materials such as cement, which is expected to raise at least $500 million. Pre-marketing was initially scheduled to start today, but has been delayed for a week.

Fleming joined UBS in London in 1999 as part of the European and Asian ECM team. In April 2006, he moved to Singapore to become head of Southeast Asian ECM before taking up the position as co-head of syndicate and blocks in March last year.