Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) corporate banking and financial markets has announced the launch of its leveraged finance business in Japan. To assist the rollout, it has also recruited a team of eight from Shinsei Bank to back up the new business line.
The new team will be lead by Satoshi Kitahama, who RBS has appointed head of lthe everaged finance & project finance division. Kitahama takes on the role after the September 2004 announcement that he would take the position of head of M&A and general manager of the corporate advisory program.
Prior to this role, Kitahama was based in London, where he worked for Credit Suisse Europe, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch in a variety of leveraged and structured finance positions. Over his career, he also has held several syndication and capital markets jobs.
Kitahama will report locally to John Mullins, corporate banking and financial markets country head for RBS in Tokyo and globally to Euan Hamilton, head of leveraged finance.
Joining Kitahama at RBS’s leverage finance business will be Katsuhiko Ando, Tatsuo Konishi and Yoichiro Mori, who arrive at the bank as directors.
Ando arrives at RBS from Shinsei Bank’s speciality finance division where he was a director. Prior to this, he worked for Thomson Financial as head of IR consulting. Outside of Japan, Ando also held positions in New York, Singapore and Jakarta with Nippon Credit Bank’s investment banking division.
Konishi also moves over from Shinsei where he too was a director in its speciality finance division. He also brings six years of experience in Seoul, where he cultivated Korean and Japanese corporate financing transactions for Long Term Credit Bank of Japan (LTCB), which is now Shinsei. For this institution, he also worked in corporate finance.
To RBS, Mori brings experience from HSBC and Citibank, where worked in leveraged finance, aircraft finance and structured finance. He also counts Salomon Smith Barney as an employer.
Also shifting to the Scottish institution will be Bruce Harris, Kazuki Yoneda and Takaaki Tamai who all join as vice presients. Robert Okuyama comes on board as an associate.
