Nigel Chalk has been hired to head Barclays’ emerging market research division, replacing the sometimes controversial (and media-friendly) Peter Redward, who returned to his native New Zealand late last year to set up an emerging market advisory firm.
Chalk took up his Singapore-based position yesterday and, as managing director and head of emerging Asia research, will lead the UK-based bank’s macroeconomic, foreign exchange and interest rate teams across the region, including Australia and New Zealand, but not Japan.
He joins from the IMF, where he was most recently the China mission chief and a senior adviser on Greater China and Mongolia. While there, Chalk had an important role leading the organisation’s annual Article IV consultations with China governing obligations around exchange agreements, according to a statement by Barclays. He also had responsibility for the IMF’s biannual regional economic outlook for Asia and the Pacific.
Chalk began his career at the IMF in 1997 and, in a peripatetic career, has worked in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil. He also held specialist jobs working in Russia, Korea and the Philippines.
At Barclays, he reports to Piero Ghezzi, head of global economics, emerging markets and FX research, and to Jon Scoffin, Asia-Pacific head of research.
“The breadth and depth of his experience working as an economist in emerging markets both in Asia and around the world will significantly strengthen and complement our regional and global coverage,” said Ghezzi.
“[Chalk’s] appointment further underscores our commitment to leverage the views of our Asian economics and strategy teams to create differentiated, thematic and cross-asset research for our clients,” added Scoffin.
In August 2011, Barclays hired Yiping Huang, an academic from Peking University and a former chief Asia economist at Citi. In the same month, the bank poached Olivier Desbarres from Credit Suisse to head its foreign exchange strategy across Asia.
