FinanceAsia caught up yesterday with ABN AMRO's global head of equities, John Smith and Asia CEO of equities, Mario Malt. Both are new to the firm and come with distinguished track records. Smith was a UBS long hauler between 1988 to 1996 in its highly regarded equity research team. He then had brief spates at Deutsche Bank and DLJ. He took over as global head at ABN in October.