Singapore Exchange (SGX) has appointed Michael Luk as the new Head of Fixed Income Origination and Sales in a bid to strengthen its fixed income business. Meanwhile, financial services firm Standard Chartered has hired a London-based top lawyer Chris Allen from Barclays who will relocate to Singapore.

SGX strengthens its fixed income businesses with a new lead

Singapore Exchange (SGX) has appointed Michael Luk as the new Head of Fixed Income Origination and Sales to strengthen its fixed income business.

Luk, who will assume the charge from January 1 next year, will report to SGX Head of Equities & Fixed Income Chew Sutat, the stock exchange said in an announcement on Monday.

Luk is tasked with spearheading the growth of SGX fixed income businesses through deeper and broader relationships with market participants. This includes extending SGX regional leadership in bond listings and driving institutional client adoption of OTC trading in the Asian bond market via SGX's new Bond Pro trading platform, the announcement added.

With more than 18 years in debt capital markets covering all fixed income debt financing products including public bonds, high yield and leveraged finance, Luk served as the Global Head of Debt Capital Markets with ANZ Banking Group in Hong Kong earlier.

He has also served as the head of Asia Pacific Debt Capital Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and spent about nine years with Deutsche Bank AG in Hong Kong where he was both Head of Fixed Income Capital Markets and Head of Asia Leveraged Debt Capital Markets.

StanChart hires Barclays top lawyer

Financial services firm Standard Chartered has hired a London-based top lawyer Chris Allen from Barclays who will relocate to Singapore.

Allen will join Standard Chartered's investment bank as its new general counsel (GC) for clients and products will start his role on January 16, according to a report from finews.asia on Monday.

While he will report to GC David Fein, Allen will be in-charge of legal at the bank's main business units that include corporate and investment banking, commercial banking, private banking and wealth management.

Currently he is serving as the global Head of Regulatory Policy across the investment bank, retail bank, corporate bank, wealth management and Barclaycard, based on his Linkedin profile.