Morgan Stanley has made changes to its Asia-Pacific fixed-income sales and trading organisation and, at the same time, created a new derivatives structuring team, the US investment bank said today.
Distribution of interest rate, currency and credit (IRCC) products are now aligned into country clusters, while a new corporate and insurance company derivatives structuring group combines resources from Morgan Stanley's IRCC and fixed-income capital markets (FICM) divisions.
Since late last year, the bank's clients have been serviced by a single salesperson advising on all IRCC products, which replaced a more diffuse set-up where coverage was provided on a product basis by several salespeople. The idea is to make the distribution system more efficient for both clients and the IRCC division.
"We believe this is a powerful new structure that will allow us to significantly increase our footprint with clients in the region," said Ben Falloon, head of distribution for IRCC.
Greater China is led by Larry Chi, Korea by Jake Ko and Oh-Kee Kwon, and Southeast Asia by Sneha Sanghvi. Farman Siddiqui heads up India and Peter Ireland is in charge of Australia and New Zealand. All regional chiefs report to Falloon.
The newly formed collaborative entity -- the corporate and insurance company derivatives structuring group -- is in the hands of Julien Begasse, who retains his position as head of FICM Asia-Pacific. His local reporting line continues to be to the investment banking division.
"Through this collaboration [with Begasse and his team], we will be able to bring the structuring function under one roof to focus on both public and private side transactions and the growing asset/liability management business for insurance companies," said Falloon. The team will be made up of structuring people from both IRCC and FICM.
"This will allow us to offer clients the full suite of solutions to help them best manage their businesses and balance sheets," he added.
In a related move, Francois Thomas joins the IRCC division from FICM to spearhead Morgan Stanley's corporate FXEM (foreign exchange emerging markets) drive across Asia-Pacific, reporting to Falloon and to Yuki Hashimoto, who remains head of FXEM sales for Asia. Thomas's group will concentrate on selling "structured alternatives" to foreign exchange clients, and help the country teams with their clients.
Meanwhile, Kevin Lepsoe and Sage Zaheer now jointly run a financial institution structuring team, which offers interest rate and credit structuring -- including CDOs (collateralised debt obligations) -- to investors. According to market participants in general, barely a year out of the financial crisis, some investors have already started to dip their toes, albeit tentatively, into the credit derivative quagmire.
All the moves and appointments are internal, but a Morgan Stanley spokesperson said that external hires will be made on a tactical basis when appropriate.
In August, Morgan Stanley's Asia head of IRCC, Ranodeb (Ronnie) Roy, told FinanceAsia that he expects investors will eventually return to structured products, including credit. "So we are trying to build a business that has a very good balance -- a balance between the traditional flow businesses and the traditional structured businesses so that in either cycle we will be able to serve our clients and make money", he said.
Roy also highlighted the recent growth of the bank's business, both in terms of regional market share and headcount.
"We had a special emphasis on sales because we think at the beginning of 2008 we didn't have adequate scale in the sales division in the region, so we had to build that up. And we're still doing that," he said.
