Two platforms, one franchise, one week

PRIVATE BANKING LIFE

Good morning. Last Monday this publication wrote that the diaspora franchise was being institutionalised from three directions at once and that seats were multiplying faster than the bankers who could fill them. It did not expect the proof to arrive within seven days. This week two of Singapore’s largest wealth platforms re-staffed the same franchise — Global India — in the same week, with one senior banker moving between them. That is the story. Everything else follows from it. Four minutes.

The Big Story · Singapore & The Gulf

Two platforms, one franchise, one week

HSBC Private Bank makes four senior appointments across Global India, Singapore and Offshore China

HSBC Private Bank announced four senior appointments on Wednesday. Vivek Pandohi becomes Head of Middle East–Global India, reporting to Gautam Anand, Head of Global India; an internal move for a 23-year HSBC veteran who most recently led the bank’s UAE Global India and expat business, with an explicit remit to expand coverage across the Gulf Cooperation Council. In Singapore, Harjeet Singh joins as Senior Desk Head, Global India, after more than nine years at Bank of Singapore where he was most recently Managing Director and Market Head for Global South Asia. Alongside him, Lay Hong Tan joins from UBS Singapore, where she was a Market Team Head, as Desk Head for the Singapore market — UHNW and HNW Singapore families and Mandarin-speaking clients in the region — and Jay See, an eighteen-year China coverage specialist most recently at Credit Suisse and UBS, becomes Desk Head for the Offshore China market in Singapore. HSBC framed the appointments around coordination for entrepreneurial families whose business, investment and family interests span multiple jurisdictions.

Read the shape, not just the names. One franchise leader promoted internally into the Gulf, one franchise leader hired externally into Singapore, and two desk heads for the Singapore booking centre's other growth engines — domestic UHNW and offshore China. That is a platform staffing the exact corridors this publication described on Wednesday, and doing it with a mix of internal elevation and external hire that shows how institutions answer scarcity when the external market is priced as it is now.

Bank of Singapore appoints two Global South Asia team heads

Bank of Singapore announced on Monday that Ankit Swaika will join as Team Head, Global South Asia, effective 2 November, based in Singapore and reporting to Zubin Dabu, Market Group Head for the Middle East, Global South Asia and International. Swaika, a CFA charterholder with more than 25 years across relationship management, investment advisory, structuring and family office advisory, joins from Bank Julius Baer Singapore, where he spent close to a decade as a senior private banker covering UHNW and HNW clients across Asia, the Middle East and Europe, following earlier roles at ANZ and in the UK and India. The bank noted the appointment follows that of Yatish Aron, who joins as Team Head, Global South Asia on 12 October. Separately, the bank’s August hires also included Joshua Lim from J.P. Morgan Private Bank as a relationship manager, alongside the Greater China hire covered here last week.

Two team heads into the same franchise inside a month is a statement of intent about Global South Asia, not a backfill. The bank is building bench depth under the market group head rather than replacing one senior seat with another — which is the more durable structure, and the one that survives the next departure. Watch the start dates: October and November arrivals mean this desk's real Q4 begins in Q1.

Zurich · Geneva

Switzerland

Maerki Baumann names a head of external asset managers

Zurich’s Maerki Baumann & Co, the Syz-family-owned bank with around CHF 13 billion in client assets, has appointed Patrick Vogt as Head of External Asset Managers from 1 September. Vogt joined the bank in 2007 and has advised EAMs there for almost twenty years, after earlier roles at Banque Générale du Luxembourg in Zurich.

A quiet appointment in a sector that is anything but quiet. Swiss EAMs have been folding, merging and selling under the weight of the licensing regime, and the custodian banks that serve them are consolidating share as the survivors get larger. Long-tenured EAM heads at the mid-sized Swiss banks are the people to watch as that shake-out enters its next phase.

The Pattern This Week

The Signal

The thesis of the past week was that the diaspora franchise is now a three-centre contest and that the binding constraint is the small population of senior bankers with genuinely portable books. This week’s moves show what that constraint looks like when it bites. A market head for Global South Asia moved from one Singapore platform to a competitor’s Global India desk; the platform he left announced two team heads for the same franchise within days; and the hiring platform simultaneously promoted a Gulf-based veteran to lead Global India coverage across the GCC. Three institutional responses to the same scarcity, visible in one week: hire the proven external name, deepen the bench beneath the market head, and elevate from within.

There is a second thread worth pulling. Both of Singapore’s big platforms added Greater China coverage in the past fortnight — a Greater China senior relationship manager at one, an Offshore China desk head at the other. That is Singapore being built, desk by desk, as a second booking centre for offshore Chinese wealth, in the same weeks Hong Kong deepened its own cross-border plumbing. The two-centre contest this publication has been tracking is being fought on the Global India desk and the Offshore China desk simultaneously — and the platforms that win both will define the Singapore private banking league table by 2028.

Watching this week

The September hiring window opens with the Swiss back at their desks — the first strategy statements and senior announcements of the autumn land now. Whether any other Singapore or Dubai platform answers this week’s Global India appointments with its own. And whether the Geneva relaunch covered a week ago follows its executive rebuild with frontline hiring, which would confirm the diaspora thesis from the Swiss side.

Wednesday is a closer look. Friday is the operator’s view — with the results of last week’s poll.

PRIVATE BANKING LIFE | privatebankinglife.com

Private Banking Life is written and published by Steve Slater, founder of an executive search practice in private banking. It is compiled entirely from public sources. Nothing learned through search work — from clients or candidates — ever appears in this publication.

Sources this edition: HSBC Private Bank and Bank of Singapore statements (August 2026); Hubbis, Asian Private Banker, Private Banker International, The Asset, WealthBriefingAsia, Caproasia and WealthBriefing (August 2026).