Macquarie hires head of Singapore client coverage

And the hiring in the Asian investment banking industry continues. Macquarie Group announced yesterday that it has hired Leong Yung Chee as head of Singapore client coverage for Macquarie Capital Advisers, its corporate advisory and equity underwriting arm. This is a new position and the second senior hire for Macquarie Capital Advisers this month, after it poached Gaurav Gupta from Nomura to head its India business.

Leong, who was most recently a senior origination banker at Credit Suisse in Singapore, joins Macquarie as a managing director. He will report to Kalpana Desai, deputy head of Asia for Macquarie Capital Advisers, who is herself a fairly recent addition to Macquarie, having joined the firm in September last year. Desai previously spent 11 years with Merrill Lynch, primarily within M&A, and has more than 20 years of investment banking experience overall.

In the announcement Macquarie described Singapore as a "critical" market for the firm, and Leong added in a written comment that he has been impressed with Macquarie's commitment to its business in Singapore.

Leong too has a long history of working with Singapore clients. Before joining Credit Suisse in August 2007 he spent about seven years working in the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch in the same city. Between 1998 and 2000, he worked with the Singapore Economic Development Board, the government agency responsible for identifying and executing economic opportunities to enhance Singapore's position as a global business centre and to grow its economy.

Over the years Leong has been involved in a number of key transactions, including: United Overseas Bank's $5.4 billion acquisition of Overseas Union Bank; Temasek's $1.4 billion combined exchangeable and share placement in Singapore Telecom in 2004, which marked the start of the government's divestment programme in the telecom carrier; and more recently the $315 million sale of Singapore Food Industries.

Macquarie too has been keeping busy in Singapore. Over the past couple of years, it has been involved in the S$408 million ($291 million) placement and preferential offering in Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust and the S$607 million rights issue for Mapletree Logistics Trust, and acted as an adviser to the Marubeni-led consortium on its S$5 billion fundraising and acquisition of Singapore's largest power generation company Senoko Power, among other things. It is currently marketing an IPO of up to $297 million for Cache Logistics Trust together with DBS and Standard Chartered.

Macquarie Group set up an office in Singapore in 1996 and now has more than 250 staff in the city. Its businesses there span all five business groups: banking and financial services; fixed income, currencies and commodities; Macquarie Capital, which includes Macquarie Capital Advisers as well as the specialist funds business; Macquarie Funds Group; and Macquarie Securities Group.