This under-the-radar French bank has just made a big hire in Hong Kong

Crédit Agricole CIB, the investment banking arm of Crédit Agricole, has appointed ING banker Yang Zhang as a Hong Kong-based director focused on debt capital markets (DCM).

Zhang’s career is proof that you don’t necessarily need a long tenure as a DCM expert to reach director level in that product sector. Zhang joined ING in 2012 after graduating from the University of Amsterdam, but only started specialising in DCM – as a Hong Kong-based vice president – in January 2016.

She previously worked at ING in Amsterdam, and has three jobs during this stint: transaction services sales, risk analyst, and financial institutions associate, according to her online profile.

Zhang’s new bank, Crédit Agricole, reshuffled its Hong Kong ranks just last year, promoting Christophe Cretot to head of debt origination and advisory (DOA) for Asia. Cretot was previously deputy head of the team.

His move followed the departure of former DOA Asia head Atul Sodhi, who relocated to Paris as global head of debt capital markets corporates. Sodhi had been in his Asia job since 2015 when Crédit Agricole combined its loans and debt capital markets business in the region into the newly formed DOA unit.

The French bank has also made several senior transfers into its Hong Kong DOA team over the past 12 months, including Eduardo Javier Carballo from New York as a managing director, and Charles Gicquel from Paris as a business and portfolio manager, according to LinkedIn.

If you’ve recently graduated and you want to work alongside Zhang in Crédit Agricole’s Two Pacific Place office, the bank is currently hiring a DCM trainee on a one-year contract, according to its careers website. You’ll be “supporting DOA originators in their debt capital market and syndicated loans marketing initiatives” and ensuring the “smooth execution of mandated transactions in the international bond and syndicated loan markets”.

Getty: LeeYiuTung

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