Asia ECM co-head Potel leaves Morgan Stanley

Ronnie Potel, co-head of equity capital markets for Asia-Pacific at Morgan Stanley, left the bank this week, a source said yesterday.

The move comes after Potel joined Morgan Stanley in June 2010 as head of equity-linked origination for Asia-Pacific. As the bank continued to grow its capital markets platform in the region, Morgan Stanley in October last year promoted Potel and Justin Haik to co-heads of ECM for Asia-Pacific. Haik had been head of equity syndicate for the region.

The reason for Potel’s departure and his plans for the future were not immediately available yesterday.

Potel joined Morgan Stanley from Standard Chartered where he was global head of origination for equity-linked securities for about 10 months. Before that he was head of equity-linked origination for Asia-Pacific at Citi for almost four years and worked in the equity-linked origination team at Deutsche Bank in London, Hong Kong and Japan for another five years.

According to Dealogic data, ECM volume for Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, stood at $85.2 billion for the first half of this year, down about 24% from the same period last year. Worries about the eurozone debt crisis and a slowdown in the Chinese economy are keeping investors wary — Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is up about 8% so far this year, but it has shed nearly 8% since this year’s high in late February.

During the first half, Morgan Stanley ranked fourth in the regional ECM league table (Asia-Pacific ex-Japan), after UBS, Goldman Sachs and Citi, according to the data. Morgan Stanley had a 6.4% market share, it shows.

Some of the deals in which Morgan Stanley was involved recently include a $645 million share sale in Swire Properties by the Swire group. Morgan Stanley was also a joint global coordinator for MNC Skyvision’s $220 million IPO in Indonesia.

Among recent moves in the region, Citi has hired Morgan Stanley Asia veteran Willard McLane to run the bank’s Asean and financial institutions group business in Asia. McLane will be based in Singapore and starts in October.