ABN AMRO has announced in the last week a series of new hires in the corporate finance department and in the equities division.

In Korea the bank has appointed Jae Won Lee as its head of corporate finance for the country. Lee will be an MD and be based in Seoul. He joins from ING where he was the branch manager of ING Securities.

Joining Lee from ING is his namesake, John Lee who is joining the corporate finance division in Hong Kong. He will be tasked with supporting ABN's Korean corporate finance team, primarily looking after the execution of Korean M&A and ECM deals in Hong Kong.

Both Lees will report to James Pearson, ABN's head of corporate finance for the region.

On the equities side, the bank has made three new appointments in Hong Kong. Hong Shik Kim has joined from Good Morning Securities to head up the firm's Asian equity-linked product. The appointment will seek to capitalize on his strong relationships in Korea with financial institutions.

In equity derivatives, Lalita Raman joins from Morgan Stanley. She will be focusing on the equity access and volatility side of the business with institutional investors and hedge funds. Ramon will report to Anthony Wah, co-head of Asian equity derivatives.

On the execution side of the equities business, Tan Kee Meng joins ABN from Goldman as head of advanced execution services for Asia. With 15 years of experience, Tan will look at programme trading, index arbitrage and client connectivity. Tan will also oversee the implementation of a new IT programme to upgrade all forms of client connectivity, back office systems and programme trading.

"We are very pleased with the development of our Asian Equities business," says Alastair Barr, joint head institutional equities. "For the past year, we have significantly revamped our equities teams and products in Asia to provide more focus on our regional product capability and client reach. We will continue to do so through integration across regions whenever commercially useful and investing in resources and technology."