Standard Chartered hires equity syndicate banker from Citi

Standard Chartered has appointed Nicholas Chia to the number two position on its equity syndicate desk, based in Hong Kong, according to a source.

Chia joins from Citi’s equity syndicate team and will start the new position in about a month, the person said. He will report to Natalie Brink, the head of syndicate at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong.

Chia has spent his entire financial career at Citi. He joined in October 2006 and worked on the fixed income syndicate desk until 2008. He then moved to the equity capital markets and equity-linked desk, where he stayed until the end of 2009 when he joined the ECM syndicate.

Citi’s recent equities track record includes Haitong Securities’ $1.67 billion initial public offering in April, when it acted as joint global coordinator for the deal along with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Haitong International, J.P. Morgan and UBS. Standard Chartered was one of the joint bookrunners.

Standard Chartered, along with J.P. Morgan, also recently arranged an IPO for Indian auto components maker Samvardhana Motherson Finance, though the company ended up calling off the $313 million IPO due to poor sentiment towards India and concerns about new tax regulations. And it is a joint bookrunner for the Hong Kong IPO of Chinalco Mining that is seeking to raise about $1 billion. Investor education for the greenfield copper mining business in Peru started on Monday this week.

Citi ranked third in Dealogic’s ECM league table for Asia ex-Japan last week with $4.3 billion, after Goldman Sachs and UBS. Standard Chartered was not in the top 10.

In other recent moves, Standard Chartered last month hired Ken Olson as global head of equity-linked solutions, based in Hong Kong, to work on the origination of convertible bonds as well as corporate equity derivatives. Olson was previously with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Japan.