Joerg Hansen will be driving the emerging markets expansion at Singapore-based DBS, a role which will help bolster the bank’s newly created international team.

Hansen is currently on gardening leave and is set to join in mid-May.

Hansen was previously director, head of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Greece at Credit Suisse, based in Singapore. He spent nearly four years in the job.

Prior to Credit Suisse, he worked for Swiss rival Julius Baer as director of Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, for just over a year.

It is not yet clear who will replace Hansen at Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank did not immediately return calls for comment.

Hansen’s appointment comes after several other senior hires for the new offshore division, for which the bank plans to grow assets under management by a factor of five.

To lead the team last month DBS hired Peter Triggs, the deputy chief of Bank of China (Suisse), as managing director, head of international and head of wealth structuring, based in Singapore.

Expansion plans

Triggs' move heralds a new era for southeast Asia’s largest lender, which is launching a large-scale expansion into the international markets – a departure from the 44-year old bank’s historically Asian remit.

In an exclusive interview in February, the private bank’s chief operating officer Olivier Crespin, said that the bank will add five senior executives to spearhead growth in EMEA and the US. Hansen will be one of these. 

The international client base currently comprises around 2-3 per cent of the private bank’s $40 billion of assets under management, equating to less than a billion, said Crespin at the time. Within five years Crespin wants to swell this to around $5 billion, in line with bold growth projections for the rest of the franchise. Overall, DBS wants to grow wealth management assets to around $51 billion by 2014.

“We have always been focused on Asian clients but now we have some interest in looking at clients from Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America who are keen to invest in Asia's growth,” he said.

The new hires will be based in Singapore, covering their respective markets remotely. The first members of the new team recently started. James Tan was hired from Switzerland's Credit Suisse in November, where he spent seven years, most recently as senior vice president of investment consulting. Yann Mocellin joined in February from multi-family office Swiss-Asia Financial Services, where he was a member of the executive management team. The bank has also identified one more senior relationship manager who will come on board around the same time as Hansen.