Standard Chartered has hired veteran former Goldman Sachs dealmaker Chang-Po Yang as vice-chair of its corporate and institutional banking unit for Greater China and North Asia, FinanceAsia learned from a person with knowledge of the matter on Monday.
The appointment of Yang will take effect next month, the person said. The role puts him at the senior managerial position of the bank's biggest unit.
Based in Hong Kong, Yang will report to chief executive of corporate and institutional banking Simon Cooper and Benjamin Hung, regional chief executive for Greater China and North Asia.
Yang joined Goldman Sachs in 2006 and was named a partner of the Wall Street firm in late 2010. He decided to retire in 2014 and served as an advisor to the company until last year.
A spokeswoman at Standard Chartered declined to comment.
The Asia-focused lender is looking to bolster its dealmaking capacity across sectors in the Greater China and North Asia region, which represented more than half of the group’s first-half profits before tax.
In its latest group presentation, the bank said it has prioritised putting more resources into the Hong Kong, Korea and China markets, which it feels more comfortable operating in. All three markets reported double digit growth in the first six months compared to the same period last year, while profits from Singapore declined 43% for the same period.
Under the rebuilding by group chief executive Bill Winters, a former JP Morgan executive who took over in 2015, Standard Chartered has improved its return on equity, a metric of profitability, to 4.5% in June from 2.1% in the same period a year earlier. However it still lags the bank's long-term goal of 10%.
