One of Asia’s fastest growing private banks has just taken on a new ED

Julius Baer’s expansion of its Asian ranks shows no signs of abating, even in the final months of the year, typically a comparatively slow time for recruitment.

The Swiss bank’s latest senior hire in Singapore is Pathik Gupta, who’s joined as an executive director in markets and advisory solutions, the team that analyses and monitors markets to offer clients structured advice in fields such as investment strategy.

Gupta will be helping to lead the bank’s “service model transformation rollout”, according to a source, suggesting he has a strategy/consultancy focus. Julius Baer declined to comment on his appointment.

Gupta comes from a consultancy background. He previously spent more than six years as an associate partner and APAC head of wealth management/Southeast Asia head of financial services at McLagan, part of HR consultancy Aon Hewitt.

Julius Baer has also been busy hiring Asian relationship managers. Last year it recruited 30 RMs, taking its headcount to 430, and giving it the fifth largest front-office workforce of any private bank in Asia. The firm grew its RM headcount at a compound annual growth rate of 13.4% between 2014 and 2018, the second highest rate in the region, according to data from Asian Private Banker. This earlier hiring drive was inspired by then CEO (and Asia advocate) Boris Collardi, who left for Pictet & Cie in late 2017. Nearly a quarter of Julius Baer’s staff are now based in Asia.

More recently, Julius Baer has been partly focused on expanding its intermediaries unit, which works with external asset managers (EAMs) such as family offices. As we reported last month, Kayoko Francis, a former Morgan Stanley banker-turned fintech entrepreneur, joined the intermediaries team in a director-level role. Last year, Julius Baer hired Vianne Choo from Vontobel as team head of intermediaries for Southeast Asia and took on James Tan from Maybank as an RM on the same desk. Hong Kong-based Sandro Treier was promoted to head of intermediaries for Greater China earlier this year.

Julius Baer has also been hiring for digital and technology roles. In February, for example, Avik Bera joined the firm in Singapore from US tech consultancy Cognizant as an executive director, business transformation Asia. His focus is on digital products.

Gupta himself started his career at KPMG in 2004 and then worked as regional head of technology audit for Siemens between 2005 and 2006. He was at Credit Suisse from 2008 to 2013 after he completed an MBA from INSEAD.

Gupta’s new office at Julius Baer is within the $5.1bn Marina One business and residential development, which opened last year and has been widely acclaimed as one of the most instagrammable places in Singapore thanks to its urban-oasis architecture and skybridges decked out in tropical greenery.

Image credit: Keith Chong, Unsplash

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