Barclays Private Bank boosts Singapore team with two veterans
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Mr Tom Road (left) is the new deputy head, while Mr Loh Wengmun was appointed head of dealing and derivatives at Barclays Private Bank.
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SINGAPORE - With Singapore being a magnet for the super rich,
Barclays Private Bank on Monday said it has added two senior banking veterans to its Singapore office to boost its presence in Asia.
Mr Tom Road, 43, will be the deputy head of Barclays Private Bank in Singapore, and will focus on the needs of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, as well as global family offices in Singapore.
He will report to Ms Evonne Tan, who heads the Singapore private banking arm.
Mr Loh Wengmun, 55, has been made the head of dealing and derivatives at the private bank here and will report locally to Mr Ken Sze, head of investments for Asia, and functionally to Mr Aurelien Callegari, global co-head of capital markets and head of structured products.
Mr Road has worked for the private bank in London for the past 13 years, where he covered ultra-high-net-worth individuals and global family offices. Before that, he was a senior lawyer at Linklaters, specialising in mergers and acquisitions for real estate clients, ranging from sovereign wealth funds and listed property companies, to private investors.
Mr Loh, who has more than 30 years of trading experience across asset classes such as derivatives, foreign exchange, equities and fixed income, has been with Barclays since 2008, and was most recently head of the United Kingdom Direct Access for the private bank in London.
With the new role in Singapore, he will build up the capital markets and trading capability of the private bank in Singapore.
Describing the two as “instrumental additions” to the private banking team in Singapore, Ms Tan said they have experience working with some of the largest and most sophisticated family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals in Britain and Europe.
Mr Jean-Christophe Gerard, chief executive of Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management, said the Singapore private banking arm continues to see significant growth, and the Republic serves as a strategically important location for Barclays in the region.
Said Ms Tan: “In 2021, when we launched our private banking operations in Singapore, we came in fresh and were able to provide an unbiased view on asset allocation, portfolio construction and generally, more holistic advice, resulting in exceeding expectations in terms of hiring bankers, and onboarding clients and assets.”
She added that business has “grown significantly” as clients looked to universal banks like Barclays to meet their complex and multi-jurisdictional needs.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) estimated there were 700 single-family offices as at the end of 2021, almost twice the 400 in 2020.
The Straits Times reported in May that family offices have seen robust interest in Singapore, with 182 opening so far in 2023, following two years of strong growth. The offices that started operations from January to April 24 come on top of the 690 that opened in 2022 and the 672 in 2021, data from analytics firm Handshakes shows.
Family offices set up by Singapore residents, comprising citizens and permanent residents, account for a large slice of those set up here between 2018 and 2022. Offices from China, as well as Malaysia and Hong Kong, have also established operations here in recent years.
Handshakes’ data differs from MAS numbers largely because single-family offices are not necessarily set up to undertake investments, and even if they are, they do not need to be licensed.
