As part of the reorganisation of Royal Bank of Scotland’s Asian operations, Jitendra Kamdar will lead a new division called financial institutions relationship management. He is in the vanguard of the movement of several FIG bankers, who are joining the fixed income and currencies sales team, according to a spokesperson.
The team will focus on “establishing and maintaining relationships with priority fixed income clients”, forming a “markets driven relationship management function” throughout Asia-Pacific ex-Japan, she said. The objective is to increase market share through a “rigorous account planning framework”.
Kamdar was previously head of financial institutional sales for Southeast Asia, and has 23 years experience in the industry. Previous employers include Barclays, J.P. Morgan, IBS and Lehman Brothers, where his roles have been mainly in interest rates and credit, covering institutional clients, hedge funds and central banks in the region. He joined RBS in 2010 from Barclays, where he was head of credit and fixed income sales in Southeast Asia for almost six years.
In his new job, Kamdar will be a managing director and report to Samir Atassi, head of sales for Asia ex-Japan. His responsibilities cover rates, credit, foreign exchange and equity derivatives.
Atassi, who took on an expanded role earlier this year, aims to establish an integrated business, combining all of the bank’s product and segment sales teams, including corporate and institutional sales, investor products, equity derivatives sales, fixed income relationship management, e-commerce as well as prime services.
“The setting-up of a financial institutions relationship management team underscores the importance the bank places on fixed income clients and is part of the bank’s effort in enhancing the alignment of its business structure to areas of strength and efficiency,” said the spokesperson.
RBS said in a statement on January 12 that its priority was to concentrate on its core strengths. In particular, it decided to exit its cash equities and corporate finance businesses worldwide, which led to cut-backs in related operations. Last month, it made a raft of redundancies across its equity derivatives and fixed-income, currency and commodities (FICC) divisions in Asia. Most notably, the bank’s investor products and equity derivatives sales teams were consolidated into one sales force covering all products and segments.
The following month, RBS sold a range of regional businesses to Malaysia’s CIMB for $278 million. These comprised its cash equities operations in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan (including the cash equities sales desks in the US and the UK), as well as the equity capital markets and corporate finance businesses in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
The bank, which is 82%-owned by the UK government, said this week that it will repay the final part of the £163 billion in emergency loans it received from British and US taxpayers during the financial crisis.
