UBS names co-heads for Asia GCM

John Sturmey will be returning to UBS to become co-head of global capital markets (GCM) for Asia. He will work alongside Joseph Chee, who has been appointed to the same role. Sturmey and Chee will replace Steven Barg, who left the firm late last month to join Goldman Sachs.

UBS has once again moved quickly to fill a gap in its ranks, showing that it is intent not to let a few resignations have an impact on the day-to-day running of its business. And yet again, it has turned to in-house talent or, in the case of Sturmey, a banker with a long history at UBS.

Sturmey spent over 10 years with UBS before he left in 2008 to join ABN AMRO as head of ECM for Asia. At the time, ABN was already in the process of being integrated into the Royal Bank of Scotland and, once that was completed, Sturmey took on the same role at RBS. At UBS he was a managing director and head of equity syndicate for Asia between 2004 and 2008 and helped build an ECM franchise that featured in the top two in Dealogic's ECM league tables for Asia ex-Japan in each of the past five years.

Chee is currently head of GCM for China and vice-chairman for China investment banking and has been responsible for building the bank's overall capital markets business in China for the past five years -- a business that is a significant driver of the firm's investment banking revenues in the Asia. Chee has been involved in all of UBS's landmark ECM transactions involving China during this period, including Petrochina's A-share IPO, the Hong Kong IPOs for Bank of China and China Merchants Bank, and the A- and H-share listings of China Pacific Insurance.