Moore, who spent five years at JPMorgan in the US up until 2001, will be responsible for the coverage of central banks and sovereign wealth funds. Sovereign wealth funds have been attracting a lot of attention this year given their increasing role as providers of capital to cash-strapped global investment banks amid the ongoing credit crunch, but sources say JPMorgan has identified both central banks and sovereign wealth funds as critical growth areas for the firm. Despite his global responsibilities, Moore will be based in Hong Kong, which is yet another indication of the level of importance that JPMorgan û and other investment banks too û attaches to this region.
MooreÆs primary focus will be on clients based in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific and he will report both to Gaby Abdelnour, JPMorganÆs chairman and CEO for Asia-Pacific, and to Klaus Diederichs, who is head of investment banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
At Bear Stearns, Moore held a range of positions, such as manager of frequent borrowers within capital markets and head of global debt syndicate in New York. He also spent three years in London as head of fixed-income sales and as co-head of European fixed income. He moved to Hong Kong in 2007 to lead the firmÆs Asia operations. During his previous stint at JPMorgan, he ran an integrated business across cash and derivatives products for US agencies and sovereign clients.
According to an internal announcement issued at around the time of his appointment last month, Moore will make further appointments to his team ôin due courseö.
Meanwhile, the other recent hires give some idea of which areas the bank expects will be active once the current downturn eases off, namely China and India, and on the investment banking side, natural resources.
Eugene Lau and William Wu have both joined as executive directors to cover natural resources clients in China, working closely with the broader natural resources team under the leadership of Hugh Thomas. Lau comes from Goldman Sachs where he covered the same sector from Beijing. He has also previously worked in Hong Kong and New York. Wu moves across from China Citic Group, where he has spent the best part of 20 years working on mergers & acquisitions and capital markets projects within the energy, metals, power and utilities sectors. From 1997 to 2000, he was the China president for Austa Energy, an Australia-based group that provides engineering services to, and makes investments in, the power industry.
In addition to these two, Angela Hu has joined JPMorgan from Merrill LynchÆs Hong Kong-based investment banking group. Having started her career at Macquarie Bank in Australia in 2001, Hu has a strong background in natural resources and will be able to provide additional support to JPMorganÆs efforts in this area, although her remit is to work on key execution assignments. Hu comes on board as a vice-president.
The recent hires to the ECM team include David Suen, who will focus on client coverage and will help drive the momentum of JPMorganÆs origination efforts in Greater China. He will be based in Hong Kong and report directly to Kester Ng, the firmÆs head of ECM for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan. Suen was most recently with UBS and before that with BNP Paribas and has more than 15 years worth of ECM experience in this region.
In India, the ECM team has been joined by Vinay Menon, who was most recently co-head of ECM at Kotak Mahindra. He will assume the title of executive director and will replace Mehul Savla, who is leaving JPMorgan after only one year to start up his own business. He will report to Arjun Khullar, the firmÆs Singapore-based head of South Asia ECM.
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