SG adds two more to research team

Steven Wong is appointed director and head of Singapore/Malaysia research, while Neel Sinha becomes director and senior investment analyst covering the gaming and technology sectors in Singapore/Malaysia.

Wong joins SG from ABN AMRO in Singapore, where he was responsible for Asian media and Singapore property research and managed an Asian media team. Prior to joining ABN AMRO, he was head of Singapore equities research at Paribas Singapore.

Sinha joins from ABN AMRO in the Philippines where he had responsibility for equities and for Thailand, Indonesia and Philippine research. Sinha, in fact, rejoins SG, after his two-year stint with ABN AMRO. From 1996 to July 2000, Sinha covered regional utilities at SG and was also responsible for Philipppine research.

The two new hires add to that of Charle Peza, who took up the responsibility for North Asian telecoms research in April this year. Before taking up the position, Peza served as head of Asian telecoms research at Lehman Brothers. Last week Robert Mumford, director of institutional sales of Asian equities at SG, was appointed as head of Hong Kong research.

Commenting on the two additions to his team, Sriyan Pietersz, who was appointed head of research for Asia in early March, says, "We're looking at expanding in areas that we see will best benefit our clients. SG's new research approach, which combines a strong bottom-up methodology together with focused sector and market analysis, gives us the flexibility and versatility required to identify and analyse the stocks that perform consistently for our investor clients."

SG's research team covers ten Asian countries and seven industry sectors: technology, telecoms, utilities, banks, small caps/consumers, media and biotechnology. SG prides itself on being the first investment bank to initiate research coverage of the biotech sector in Asia.

In early March, SG announced a series of key appointments in an attempt to capitalize on its corporate and investment banking activities. Dr Foo Fatt Kah was appointed to head the newly formed equity division comprising of equity research, sales and sales trading. Pieteresz and Michael Hanson-Lawson, head of sales and sales trading, report to Dr Foo. At the same time, Raymond Chang, who had joined SG as head of investment banking in March 2001 from JPMorgan, was assigned to a newly created position with responsibility for developing SG's corporate finance activities and its sector expertise in power & utilities and TMT (telecoms, media and technology).

SG's Asian investment banking operations are under the stewardship of Christian Gomez, chairman, and Michel Macagno, chief executive officer.