Standard Chartered banker leaves for MD job at BNP Paribas in Singapore

Standard Chartered director and private banker Rahul Dutta Chowdhury has moved to BNP Paribas Wealth Management in Singapore. Chowdhury joined the French firm earlier this month as a managing director, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He’d been with Stan Chart in Singapore for three years. Chowdhury worked as a senior private banker at Credit Suisse in Zurich between 2015 and 2018.

Chowdhury isn’t the only ex-Stan Chart banker that BNP Paribas has taken on in Asia this year. In January, it hired Michael Yong-Haron, formerly SCB’s market head for Greater China and North Asia, as Hong Kong CEO and head of North Asia. Other notable recent recruits include Kevin King, who joined from Citi in March as market head for China.

BNP Paribas hasn’t had things all its own way in the competitive market for private bankers in Asia. As we reported in January, Nomura recruited a team of Southeast Asia BNP bankers: Brajesh Jha, Mohit Gupta, Charly Madan, Nini Rojanavanich and Umesh Pandey.

In April, 30-year firm veteran Mignonne Cheng, the former Asia chairwoman of BNP Paribas Wealth Management, joined J. Safra Sarasin as its chairwoman for Asia. Senior relationship manager Connie Chan joined UPB earlier this month, having worked as a director at BNP, focusing on Hong Kong and China.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management’s headcount of relationship managers in Asia was 214 at the end of 2020, down from 230 a year previously, according to data from Asian Private Banker. It was the only top-20 private bank in Asia to register a year-on-year decline in assets under management. AUM fell by 4.4% to $94bn.  

Photo by Eugenia Clara on Unsplash

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