In this newly created role, Lee will represent the bank on local committees and regulatory as well as policy bodies. He will also play a key role in facilitating cooperation across departments. He remains a member of Merrill LynchÆs Asia-Pacific region executive committee.
Taiwan has been relatively quiet in all lines of business compared with other Asian markets, but Merrill says there are signs the market is picking up in areas including mergers and acquisitions, capital markets and structured products.
ôWe want to expand across all these business areas and keep Taiwan in line with what weÆre doing in other markets across Asia. Albert will be instrumental in enhancing collaboration of different business lines so as to maximise revenue and strategy growth of the bank,ö says a Merrill Lynch spokesperson.
Lee spent the early years of his Merrill Lynch career focusing on the Taiwan market, joining in 1990 as a sales executive before becoming general manager of the Taiwan private client group in 1992. In 1997 he became Taiwan market manager, with additional responsibilities of overseeing all of the bankÆs businesses in Taiwan.
The bank has also made organisational changes to its GPC division in the Pacific Rim and has given its head of GPC India, Rahul Malhotra, the additional responsibility of head of GPC Asia advisory. In his expanded role, Malhotra will be responsible for all of MerrillÆs financial advisors û also referred to as private bankers - in Asia ex-Japan and will effectively run the private banking business in the region together with Abhinav Gorawara, Tony Stanton and Wayne Yang.
Gorawara is head of the equity structured solutions group within the global markets and investment banking division (GMI) as well as of the newly formed financial products group within GPC, while Stanton, who moved across from Citi in April, is head of the managed product group for GPC Pacific Rim.
Yang has also been hired from Citi and is expected to join Merrill in September to head up the Pacific Rim ultra high-net-worth private investment banking coverage team, which was set up in May to provide investment banking services to ultra high-net-worth individuals. The aim of the new unit is to integrate the bankÆs private banking arm and its investment banking groups.
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