Evan Goldstein has left the bank after running the global RMB business for three years as managing director. He has relocated to California to join East West Bank as a senior vice-president and head of strategic planning and development.
His departure comes just three months after Amir Hossain, a director in the same team, also based in Hong Kong, left to set up his own China consultancy, advising on market access for foreign investors.
The bank confirmed the departures but declined to comment further, citing internal policy.
A source familiar with the situation told GlobalCapital Asia's sister publication GlobalRMB that a number of banks were rethinking their RMB strategies, as a result of a shift in China’s approach.
“Around 2014 it was peak optimism around RMB internationalisation (RMBi),” the source said. “Universal banks put people on overlay roles to oversee the market. Banks were expecting to see more specialist coverage developing in London, Frankfurt, New York. But that trajectory then changed into the opposite direction after capital controls were imposed last year.”
Recent reforms from China have confirmed a change in the RMBi project, with the focus moving much more to foreign investor and issuer access to the onshore market, rather than attempting to foster offshore usage of RMB.
Standard Chartered eliminated a US-based RMB team in December 2015.
Bing Chen, BNP Paribas’ head of the RMB competence centre, was promoted to China CEO in July, with no replacement announced as yet. He is still in charge of the RMB competence centre.
Jennifer Jiang, the Beijing-based global head of RMB solutions at JP Morgan, relocated to the US in June 2016 and is currently an MIT Sloan Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s business school, according to her LinkedIn profile.
JP Morgan declined to comment on whether she still held her role at the bank.