Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) is moving a senior banker, who led its global structuring group in fixed income in New York, to a new role in asset management in Singapore.

Sudip Thakor, who will be initially based in New York as head of global emerging markets products in the asset management division, will move to Singapore in his new role next year, according to an internal note seen by Reuters. 

 

His job will be to develop investment opportunities in private equity, real estate, hedge funds and exchange traded funds within emerging markets, the note said. 

 

Hedge funds have been making a beeline for Asia, attracted by the region’s strong economic growth as well as lighter regulation in Singapore and Hong Kong as Western countries look to tighten up on what is still largely a lightly regulated industry. 

 

Singapore is one of Asia’s leading centres for real estate funds and private banking. It is the Asia-Pacific headquarters for Credit Suisse’s private banking unit. 

 

Many foreign banks have moved bankers from New York and London to Hong Kong and Singapore as they tap Asia’s growing wealth and economic growth. 

 

Julius Baer (BAER.VX) moved Thomas Meier, its chief executive for Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe and a member of the bank’s executive board, to Singapore last year, while HSBC (HSBA.L) CEO Michael Geoghegan relocated to Hong Kong this year in a clear signal of the bank’s increasing focus on Asia. 

 

Thakor, a derivatives expert, joined Credit Suisse in 1997 from Bankers Trust.