Merrill Lynch has appointed James Chapman as director and head of Asia power investment banking along with a five-member team, all previously from Lehman Brothers, according to an internal memo. Their remit will be the whole power sector, which includes electricity generation and transmission, and they'll also be involved in deals across in the Pacific Rim, which at Merrill is the term used for Asia including Japan and Australia.
Chapman will report to Naomi Molson, head of consumer, retail, healthcare and multi-industries Asia origination, who herself joined the Asia Merrill team earlier this year from the bank's London office.
The significance of this is that Damian Chunilal, head of Pacific Rim origination, has been saying for the past year that he didn't overbuild his team during the bull market but has been hiring this year, during a down-market. In the past six months Merrill has hired Terence Keyes from Morgan Stanley as head of corporate finance Asia, Dan Newman from Reliance Communications as head of telecoms in the Asia-Pacific region, and also transferred Greg Fournier from Merrill Lynch Canada to boost the metals and mining business.
As Merrill in Asia builds up post its announcement of a merger with Bank of America, HSBC announced late last week that it is cutting 1,100 jobs in its global banking and markets division, which is about 4% of HSBC's wholesale banking workforce worldwide. Approximately 100 of the disappearing jobs are in Hong Kong, mainly in back-office operations.