ANZ has hired Standard Chartered’s Ivy Au Yeung as head of commercial banking for Asia, replacing Sandeep Ghosh, who is returning to India as chief executive of Bharti Axa Life Insurance.
Yeung joined ANZ in February as managing director of commercial banking for Asia. Before that, she had been a career Standard Chartered banker after joining the Asia-focused bank in 1986 and held various positions ranging from relationship management, business control and transaction-banking product management.
Yeung brings significant experience of Greater China. From 2002 she was charged with building the Hong Kong middle-market business at Standard Chartered and, from 2007, she also took on responsibility for local corporates for Greater China. Yeung is based in Hong Kong.
Notably, ANZ’s CEO for Asia-Pacific, Europe and America also joined the Australian bank after a two-decade career with Standard Chartered. Alex Thursby was group head of corporate and institutional client relationships for Standard Chartered’s wholesale bank when he was hired by ANZ in June 2007.
After ANZ’s takeover of some of Royal Bank of Scotland’s retail and commercial banking businesses in 2009, the commercial banking portfolio was given to RBS’s Sandeep Ghosh, who had been poached from Citi in Mumbai to head commercial banking for Asia.
Ghosh is returning to India to try his hand in the insurance industry, as chief executive officer of Bharti Axa Life Insurance. His appointment is still subject to regulatory approval. Bharti Axa is currently headed by Milind Chalisgaonkar, who founded the Bharti Axa General Insurance joint venture, and has also worked with the Axa group in business process outsourcing. Ghosh will be based in Mumbai.
Nitin Chopra headed the Indian life insurance joint venture -- between Bharti Airtel, Sunil Mittal’s telecommunications firm, and Axa, a French global insurance group – from the first day of operations in 2006 until mid-2010, when he resigned. After Chopra left, Glenn Williams, who is currently regional general manager of corporate development and strategy for Axa in the China region, was appointed interim CEO. Chalisgaonkar replaced Williams, but sources not close to the development said both appointments were always intended to be interim measures until the right candidate to head the business was identified.
