Paul Au, former head of Asia debt syndicate at Citi, has stepped down from his post to move to UBS where he will take on the same role as head of debt syndication. Au formally resigned from Citi last week and will start his new job with UBS in June.
Until a permanent replacement has been appointed for Au, Citi's debt capital markets syndicate desk will be led by Duncan Phillips. Phillips is currently head of the bank's Japanese syndicate desk and was brought over to Hong Kong earlier this month.
A source familiar with the team said Phillips is not there to formally take over the Asia role, but will co-manage the team with syndicate banker Terence Chiu until a replacement for Au is identified.
Au's appointment comes only two months after fellow former Citi banker Shahryar Mahbub crossed over from Citi to join the ranks of UBS. Mahbub now co-heads the fixed-income division together with Thomas Siegmund, a former co-head of fixed income for Asia ex-Japan at Nomura, who has joined UBS in the past couple of months.
Au's hire was triggered by the relocation of Fergus Edwards to London. Edwards, who has been head of debt syndicate for Asia at UBS since September 2007 when he took over from Cristian Jonsson, will take on a global role for emerging market debt.
It is expected that Edwards will continue to spend a substantial amount of time in Asia working with the debt capital markets team out of Hong Kong. Given Edward's new global role, the appointment of Au is viewed internally as an addition to the existing DCM team at UBS rather than a replacement.
Edwards joined UBS in 2006. Prior to that, he was with J.P. Morgan in London and Hong Kong.
According to UBS statistics provided to FinanceAsia earlier this year, the volume of funds raised via the global debt capital markets in 2009 was more than $6 trillion. Asia ex-Japan made up for 7% of this total, or about $458 billion. The vast majority of this business was booked in domestic currencies. UBS helped arrange $12.6 billion of issuance in the region, which equated to 2.8% of the market and placed it second behind HSBC in terms of volume done by international banks.
UBS and Citi both declined to comment.
