Credit Suisse has hired Sergio Morita as head of syndication and distribution in its Asia-Pacific financing group. He replaces Ashish Sharma, who has left the bank after a five-year stint.
Joining with immediate effect, Morita is based in Hong Kong, and will be a member of the bank’s regional financing group management committee, the bank said in an internal memo seen by FinanceAsia on Monday.
The debt veteran joins the Swiss bank from BNP Paribas in Hong Kong, where he was most recently head of specialised opportunities, asset finance and securitisation. Before he joined BNP in August 2015, he was the head of loan sourcing for the Asia-Pacific region at HSBC for three months, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Prior to becoming a loan banker, he was a managing director at Merrill Lynch between 2009 and 2014, responsible for distressed debt and illiquid credit sourcing. Between 1995 and 2008, he worked in various roles at Lehman Brothers, including leveraged loan syndication for Asia and fixed-income sales.
“Our strategic focus is to further enhance our syndication expertise by pursuing new means for creating additional capacity for capital and effectively utilising new sources of liquidity,” Carsten Stoehr, head of the Asia-Pacific financing group, said in the memo.
Credit Suisse said the syndication and distribution of financing transactions was a core business of its regional financing group. Since inception in 2016, over $35 billion in financing has been distributed through the syndication and distribution team, according to the bank.
A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman confirmed the accuracy of the memo, but declined to provide further comment.
The headline of this piece has been corrected
