JPMorgan has been hiring MDs in Singapore, but its latest hire isn’t a Singapore native. David Ratliff, who announced he was joining the bank yesterday, has spent most of his senior career in Hong Kong.
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Ratliff joins JPMorgan as its APAC head of FIG banking. Most recently, he was at Wells Fargo, where he was head of APAC banking, leading banking and capital markets within its corporate and investment bank (CIB). He was previously an MD and APAC head of financial institutions coverage at BNP Paribas, and spent 26 years at Citi before that.
Ratfliff was hired by Wells Fargo back in 2022 as part of an Asia hiring push, but remained in Hong Kong despite the bank’s long-term plans to shift its APAC base from Hong Kong to Singapore.
The heads of Wells Fargo’s corporate and investment bank moved to Singapore as part of this shift. When Hong Kong-based head Jafar Amin left in 2023, he was succeeded by Mandy Wan, who had relocated to Singapore that year. Last November, Rahul Rajesh was relocated from London to Singapore to co-head the division with her.
It makes Ratliff’s decision, to move to Singapore but with a different bank, a curious one. It’s not inconceivable that he was hoping to co-head the CIB instead of Rajesh.
Instead, it might be that JPMorgan is simply the more attractive employer in Asia. Dealogic data suggests the bank ranks second for M&A revenues in 2025, and third for revenues in equity capital markets. Otherwise, perhaps Ratliff just wanted a change of scenery.
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