Rupert Mitchell started at Goldman Sachs this week as co-head of ECM syndicate for Asia Pacific ex-Japan.
Mitchell, previously Citi’s head of Asia-Pacific equity syndicate, left the bank in February to serve out a three-month gardening leave, as reported.
He now works alongside Goldman’s regional co-ECM syndicate heads David Binnion and William Smiley. Smiley plans to return to London eventually, although will continue to work in Hong Kong for the interim, FinanceAsia understands.
A Goldman spokeswoman confirmed Mitchell has started at the bank but declined to comment further.
Smiley started working at Goldman in 2010. He was previously head of equity syndicate at HSBC, where he spent 10 years in total. He first came to Asia at the end of 2005 to work on the $2.5 billion IPO of Link Reit, which was the largest ever government privatisation in Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong permanently in 2006.
Mitchell has nearly 20 years of capital markets experience, specifically for Asian issuers. He initially joined Citi in 2000 and spent seven-and-a-half years at the bank, first in Hong Kong focused on equity-linked origination for Asian issuers, before moving to London in mid-2003 to work on Citi’s capital markets origination team.
He left Citi briefly to work at Jefferies as head of international equity capital markets in London from November 2007 to October 2010.
Mitchell rejoined Citi in October 2010 as its Asia-Pacific ex-Japan equity syndicate head, replacing Leslie Holland, who left the industry in June 2010 to move to New Zealand with his family. Mitchell held this role until February 2014.
Steve Lam and Harish Raman, directors on Citi’s equity syndicate unit, took over Mitchell’s responsibilities when he left in February.
Both worked together at UBS before joining Citi’s Asian equity syndicate desk three years ago. Lam held a similar role at the Swiss bank from July 2007 to March 2011, while Raman spent five years at UBS primarily focused on Asian syndicates before taking on the additional role on the Indian equity syndicate desk in the middle of 2010.
