Credit Suisse adds six to FX sales

Credit Suisse is boosting its global foreign exchange sales platform in Asia-Pacific with six new hires in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, according to a release. The additions underscore the bank's ongoing efforts to expand its flow business and to enhance the depth of its expertise in and coverage of fixed-income product, it said.

"Asia-Pacific represents one of the biggest growth opportunities in our roadmap to become a top-tier global FX provider," said Carsten Stoehr, head of fixed-income for Asia-Pacific, adding that the hires will "complement the bank's onshore emerging markets rates & FX expansion in the region".

Masaru Mizukami has joined from Calyon Securities as a director based in Tokyo. He will be responsible for spearheading the marketing of managed account fund and structured products to corporate pension funds, and will also manage the firm's FX prime brokerage client relationships in Japan.

Also in Tokyo, Kazuo Kitazawa has come on board as a director, focusing on building the bank's FX franchise with Japanese corporates and retail aggregators. Kitazawa was previously with Deutsche Bank.

Yan Qin has joined as a director of FX Sales, based in Hong Kong, and will be responsible for building up Credit Suisse's client franchise among Chinese financial institutions and sovereign wealth funds. Qin joins from J.P. Morgan where he covered central banks and proprietary trading desks.

In Singapore, Alan Thomas has come on board as a director and head of private bank sales for FX. He will be responsible for building the structured FX flow business for private banks in the region. He joins from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he was most recently head of the FX business within global wealth management for Europe and the Middle East.

Finally, Angelia Tan and Ben McColl have both been appointed as directors on the hedge fund desk in Singapore. Tan moves across from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where she held a similar role, while McColl was most recently at Deutsche Bank in New York.

All the new hires report to Ivan Chan, the bank's Singapore-based head of global FX sales for Asia.