Deutsche Bank’s co-head of corporate banking and securities (CB&S) for Asia Pacific Bhupinder Singh is leaving the bank, a person familiar with his decision said on Friday, increasing the number of gaps in the ranks of senior managers in the region.
He will depart after a handover period of a few months. CB&S is made up of corporate finance and markets, including sales, trading and structuring of financial products. The division makes up the lion's share of Deutsche’s business in Asia-Pacific.
Singh’s decision comes as Deutsche restructures globally. The firm is exiting businesses with a low return on equity, countries as well as client relationships. Asia as a whole will continue to receive investment while sales and trading globally is set to shrink by 2020.
Singh’s departure will create another void in leadership at Deutsche in Asia.
Douglas Morton, who worked out of Hong Kong and oversaw its investment banking unit, and Venky Vishwanathan, who was based in Singapore and led capital markets activities, remain on leave.
The departures of Morton and Vishwanathan, co-heads of corporate finance in Asia at the German bank, came two-and-a-half weeks after China opened an anti-corruption probe against a vice president of Hua Xia Bank, which is part-owned by Deutsche Bank.
Robert Ebert, head of equities Asia, Japan and Australia, was involved in car crash in June in Hong Kong that caused the death of a parking lot employee
Deutsche still has not replaced Neil Kell, its ECM head for Asia excluding Japan and Australasia, who re-joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch as chairman of international equity capital markets.
The person familiar with Singh’s decision said a replacement would be named in due course. There have been several senior client coverage hires in recent months as well as Kefei Li, the China head of ECM at UBS, the person said.
Singh’s meteoric rise
Deutsche promoted Singh and Michael Ormaechea to co-head CB&S for Asia-Pacific in August 2013, at the time new roles in the region, reporting to Colin Fan and Robert Rankin, global co-heads of CB&S.
In June 2012 Singh was put in charge of corporate finance and structuring, the bank’s corporate coverage, capital markets and investment banking businesses in the Asia-Pacific region.
Previously he was Asia head of structuring as well as head of the institutional client group across fixed-income and equities. He is known internally for the successful merger of the debt and equities sales forces to create one unified institutional coverage team.
Singh joined Deutsche in the global rates structuring group in 2000 and moved to Asia in 2008.
He has held senior positions across the bank’s corporate coverage, investment banking, capital markets, structuring, advisory and treasury solutions businesses based in Mumbai, London and Singapore.
He came to Deutsche from Merrill Lynch in India, where he worked from 1999 to 2000.
