RBS makes senior Asia appointments

Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed Brijesh Mehra as head of international banking for India and Southeast Asia.

The move adds Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to his existing responsibility for international banking in India, which comprises debt financing, transaction services and risk management. He is based in Mumbai.

Mehra has 26 years of wholesale banking experience across corporate finance, debt and structured debt, and transaction banking. He started his career at ABN Amro in 1991 and has worked in India, Indonesia and Singapore in various corporate and investment banking roles.

The bank has also appointed Charly Madan as head of capital and portfolio management in Asia Pacific.

Madan joined RBS in December last year from Bank of Ayudhya, where he was head of corporate banking and was also on the board of directors of its securities unit. He has more than 25 years of experience across corporate, retail and investment banking in Thailand and Vietnam.

Mehra and Madan assume their new portfolios with immediate effect, and both will continue to report to Madan Menon, co-head of markets and international banking, Asia Pacific.

RBS is in the final year of a five-year restructuring that started after it became 81%-owned by the British government. Since then it has downsized its investment banking unit to focus on its traditional strengths in rates, foreign exchange, debt capital markets, and asset-backed products.

The appointments are the latest in a number of senior-level changes in the region this year, including Donald Workman being named executive chairman of Asia in May. In June, it hired Sanjiv Vohra, the former head of Citi in the Philippines, to replace Meera Sanyal as head of India.

The international banking business at RBS covers 10 countries in the region and globally contributes roughly 8% to the bank’s total income.