RBS lands BAML structured products sales team

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has gained a four-strong equity and structured products sales team from rival Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML).

Abhinav Gorawara joins the UK bank as managing director and head of equity and structured product retail sales. He will replace Matthew Wong, formerly head of derivatives sales, who is relocating to London as global head of retail platform distribution.

Joining Gorawara at RBS are Ben Wilder, as director and senior structured product salesman, Cici Bian, with the same title but focused on clients in the greater China region, and Monique Sin, also with the same title but covering private banks. All are based in Hong Kong and will report to Gorawara, who in turn will report to Peter Irving, head of Asian equities and structured retail in Hong Kong.

Irving said the hires are a mixture of replacements and newly created positions, adding that part of the reason for hiring more staff was to increase the bank's focus on non-flow trades with private banks. Flow products in this context include products such as accumulators that banks printed in high volumes pre-crisis. Irving said while RBS will not be diminishing its focus on this side of the business, he expects private banking clients will increasingly ask for bespoke transactions.

RBS has made a number of hires in recent months, including a new head of Japanese equities and a head of derivatives sales for Korea, as well as institutional equity derivatives sales staffers for Asia-Pacific, based in Hong Kong and London.