EXCLUSIVE: Change To North Asia Leadership At Barclays

Tom Burroughes

12 July 2016

The regional head of North Asia at Barclays’s wealth management operation – part of the business recently acquired by , which like many others has been looking to cut costs and improve margins, said at the time of the transaction that while the Hong Kong and Singapore businesses have "strong growth potential", they were no longer central to its strategy. They were therefore placed into the "non-core" part of Barclays' operations in March.

Barclays is by no means the first European bank to pull wealth operations out of Asia, even though the region is often mentioned as the fastest-growing area for high net worth individuals. Societe Generale recently sold its Asian private bank to DBS, for example.