ABN Amro increases its hedge fund coverage

Dutch bank ABN Amro has increased its coverage of Asian hedge funds with the addition of two new trading strategists and the launch of a new research product aimed at the hedge fund industry.

Michael Li and Patrick Hugh will join ABN Amro Asia-Pacific Equities as trading strategists in the hedge fund sales department, reporting to Sheldon Lee. Michael Li comes to the team from Banco Santander where he worked on the Asia Pacific proprietary trading desk in Hong Kong and Singapore. He previously worked for Goldman Sachs in investment banking.

Patrick Hugh has been promoted from a research role in ABN Amro's Hong Kong research department. He has covered Hong Kong conglomerates and red chip companies for six years with the bank. He has also traded stock options in ABN Amro's futures department.

The two new hires come as ABN launches a new research product called 'Hedge Your Bets'. This product will contain trading ideas generated by the team and will be distributed to the bank's hedge fund clients. According to Sheldon Lee, the bank is getting an increasing amount of business from the local hedge fund industry and wanted to serve them better with the addition of these new hires and new research report.

Sinha comes on board

In a separate announcement, ABN has reveaed that it has hired Neel Sinha to be head of equity research in the Philippines. Sinha joins ABN from SG Securities in Manila where he had worked for the previous five years.