David Xu, a former banker at UBS, has moved over to JPMorgan to be the head of its China Equities business and Managing Director, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
The move is also reflected on Xu’s LinkedIn profile, which states that the change took place in April. According to the memo, he will be based in Shanghai and report to Ryan Holsheimer, JPMorgan’s Asia Pacific head of cash equity sales and trading.
JPMorgan Prepares for China Launch
JPMorgan is preparing to launch its majority-owned onshore securities joint venture in China. As Finance Magnates reported in March, Nomura and JPMorgan managed to secure regulatory approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to set up joint brokerage ventures in the country.
This approval followed the Chinese regulator issuing rules to raise the ceiling on foreign ownership of China-based securities firms to 51 percent in April of 2018. Previously, the limit was 49 percent.
Before he was at JPMorgan, Xu was most recently the Managing Director, Senior Relationship Management at UBS. Based in Shanghai, he held this role from August of 2017 until April of this year.
Xu originally joined UBS in September of 2014 as a Director, Head of Equities Sales, his LinkedIn states. He then went on to hold the role of Acting Head of Equities and then in June 2016, Head of Equities.
Prior to working at UBS, Xu was employed at the China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC), one of China's leading investment banking firms. He joined the firm in 2010 as an Executive Director and later went on to become a Managing Director in 2013.
According to the report from Reuters, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan confirmed the content of the memo. In addition, the US investment bank also named Nick Lai, the bank’s current Asia Pacific auto research analyst, as the head of its China equity research and Karen Li as the co-head of Hong Kong equity research along with Cusson Leung.
