HSBC has appointed Michael Young as its new country head and chief executive officer for Indonesia. He succeeds Rakesh Bhatia who has been in charge since June 2007.
“[Young] will be focused on ensuring that we meet the group’s expectations of Indonesia as one of our six core markets in emerging Asia,” Peter Wong, chief executive of HSBC unit The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp, said in a statement yesterday.
Young is currently deputy chief executive and chief technology and services officer for HSBC Turkey, where he has overseen operations covering 336 branches and offices in 65 cities and 6,400 employees.
He is an HSBC veteran, having joined the bank in 1979, and has extensive emerging markets experience. He has worked in a wide variety of roles in countries across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North America, including senior posts such as deputy chief executive officer in Singapore and Argentina, and country manager for Chile.
Meanwhile, Bhatia will move back to Hong Kong to take up the role of global head of trade and supply chain at the start of 2011. He replaces Lawrence Webb who has retired from HSBC after 29 years with the group.
Bhatia joined HSBC in 1987 and has worked in India, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, in roles encompassing corporate and investment banking, personal financial services and group training. He was deputy chief executive of HSBC Indonesia between 2002 and 2004, before becoming senior executive for strategy, propositions and channels for commercial banking in Asia-Pacific.
He then returned to Indonesia to take the helm as chief executive in June 2007 and was instrumental in the group’s successful acquisition of Bank Ekonomi last year -- a deal which, according to Wong, has given HSBC "a controlling interest in a well-run bank that is strong in the domestic SME and mass market segments”.
HSBC has operated in Indonesia since 1884. In August 2009, it completed the acquisition of a 98.96% stake in Bank Ekonomi, a leading provider of commercial banking services in Indonesia, with over 2,300 staff and 93 outlets. Bank Ekonomi’s network added to HSBC Indonesia's 104 existing outlets across 10 major cities. HSBC appointed Tony Turner as chief executive of Bank Ekonomi in April 2010.
The HSBC Group in Indonesia delivered profit before tax of $102 million in the first half of 2010.
