RBS appoints Julian Cheong as head of banking for Southeast Asia

The Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed Julian Cheong to a newly created role as head of banking for Southeast Asia. Cheong will be based in Singapore, reporting regionally to John Mullins, Asia-Pacific head of banking, and locally to Muhammad Aurangzeb, country executive for Singapore and head of global banking & markets for Southeast Asia and Pakistan.

Cheong will be responsible for driving RBS's aggressive growth in its banking business across debt, equity and advisory products, and for overall coverage in the region.

Cheong spent nearly 10 years at Goldman Sachs before leaving in 2008 to join Lehman Brothers. When Nomura bought Lehman's Asia business, Cheong became co-head of the financial institutions group for the Asia-Pacific region outside Japan at Nomura. Before joining Goldman Sachs, Cheong held a number of senior roles in Singapore government departments and agencies, including the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

"Singapore is a global trading hub of RBS and will continue to play a pivotal role in helping our target clients get access to the international capital markets and investment opportunities. We believe the addition of Julian to the team will help us further strengthen and cement the bank's relationships with our clients, who are central to everything we do at RBS," said Aurangzeb.

Since the beginning of the year, RBS has added several key senior managers to its global banking and markets team based in Singapore to support the growth of its wholesale banking business. Singapore is the regional hub for credit risk management, emerging markets G11 FX sales and trading, and global transaction banking. It also houses RBS Group's Asia-Pacific operations centre, which provides infrastructure support for global banking and markets regionally and plays an important role globally in the bank's 'follow the sun' operations that allow it to service clients 24 hours a day.