SCB hires ex-Morgan Stanley banker for MENAP

Region contributes 80% of earnings; bank wants to focus on bigger clients.

DUBAI:

Standard Chartered has hired Sarmad Lone, previously with Morgan Stanley Inc, to help boost the bank’s business with international companies in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan.

Lone has joined the British lender as its regional head for global corporates for Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan, also known as MENAP, a Standard Chartered spokesman said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Lone previously was the Doha-based head of wholesale banking for the Commercial Bank of Qatar. Prior to that Lone was the Middle East and North Africa investment banking head for Morgan Stanley based in Dubai.

Standard Chartered, which makes about four-fifths of its earnings in Asia and the Middle East, is aiming to further “institutionalise” its business in the region by focusing on bigger clients and corporates, a banking source told Reuters.

Middle East and South Asian markets such as Pakistan contributed around 11.7% of Standard Chartered’s $19.07 billion of operating income in 2012, according to the bank’s 2012 annual report.

The bank’s regional head said in March it would focus on lending opportunities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar because of the huge infrastructure building plans of oil-rich governments there and would consider acquiring a bank in Egypt to ride an expected boom in one of the Middle East’s largest economies.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31^st, 2013.

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