Northern Trust seeks Asia-Pacific expansion
Northern Trust has announced the appointment of George Hindmarsh from Citi as head of Asia-Pacific business development for its asset servicing business.
Hindmarsh joined a few weeks ago in Singapore. His mandate is to focus on servicing sovereign wealth funds and pension funds, as well as central banks, superannuation funds and asset managers.
He reports to Teresa Parker, Northern Trust’s Asia-Pacific CEO. Parker says that in the past few years Northern Trust has been working more with asset managers and superannuation funds, with mandates typically revolving around custody as clients go cross-border, and asset safety.
She says it is seeing a need for the provision of online services and real-time information along with performance and risk analytics, and a desire among asset managers and hedge fund managers for a single book of record to overcome issues with their multiple order management systems.
Hindmarsh comes in to fill a role that has been vacant for a year since Rohan Singh, who was head of sales for its asset servicing business in Asia, was transferred to Melbourne last October to serve as managing director for Northern Trust in Australia and New Zealand.
Parker explains that Hindmarsh’s role is expanded in that it is a broader portfolio than Singh’s was previously. “I have changed the title to better reflect that it covers business development of markets and strategic relationships in addition to pure sales,” she tells AsianInvestor.
Hindmarsh comes in with a hiring mandate. Northern Trust has five in business development, three in Singapore and two in Australia, and Parker says it will look to add resources in line with opportunities. “We are figuring out where we should be adding to get new business,” she notes.
Overall the firm has over 200 working in asset services across offices in its Singapore hub as well as Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong and Melbourne. It also has a processing centre in Bangalore. Globally it has $704.3 billion of assets under investment management, as at June 30.
While Parker confirms it will be seeking to broaden its geographic footprint, she says this is still under internal discussion and not yet ready for public consumption.
On the issue of finding a replacement for Kevin Hardy, who was head of global investments for Asia-Pacific and country head for Hong Kong, Parker says a candidate list is being drawn up. She reveals that the head of Hong Kong role will be separated from head of asset management.
“We would certainly like to broaden our business with sovereign wealth funds and central banks, especially on the index side of things,” she says. “We are also looking at more business with pension funds, those are two of the things I would point to which we are looking to do.”
Most recently Hindmarsh was head of UK investor services product at Citi Transaction Services, a position he had been in for less than one year, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He also worked as head of the Asia sales desk for Citi, based in London, where he was responsible for securing asset servicing mandates from European financial institutions investing into Asia. And he spent two years with the US bank in Hong Kong as a client sales manager. Prior to that he worked in sales and relationship management for HSBC in Hong Kong and Canada.