Goldman poaches CICC's chief economist

Goldman Sachs has hired Ha Jiming, China International Capital Corp's chief economist, for a position within its investment banking division, a source said yesterday. Ha will be a managing director and will start work in October.

Few details were available about the move, which was initially reported by The Wall Street Journal. However, the hire shows that Goldman continues to expand its China-focused investment banking team to meet the steady increase in the deal flow. In the first half of 2010, Chinese companies, led by Agricultural Bank of China, raised a total of $53.9 billion through the equity capital markets, which was the highest first-half volume on record and more than double the volume raised in the first half of 2009, Dealogic data show.

In the same six months, Goldman ranked fourth on China ECM deals (domestic and international) -- ahead of CICC in fifth place -- and was the only foreign investment bank to make it into the top five. UBS ranked sixth. For announced M&A, Goldman was third behind CICC and J.P. Morgan.

Ha has been chief economist at CICC since April 2004 and before that worked as a senior economist with the International Monetary Fund, which he first joined in 1993. Between November 1999 and August 2001 he was the IMF resident representative to Indonesia, and in the following two years he was on secondment to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority where he held a position as senior manager.

Ironically, Goldman lost one of its senior China economists to CICC in 2008 when Hong Liang joined the Chinese bank, not as an economist but as an investment banker. Ha is now set to make exactly the same transition, but in the opposite direction.