Patrick O'Donnell joined BlackRock in Hong Kong as a director and head of consultant relations for Asia ex-Japan, confirmed spokeswoman Rowena Kwok.
The position is new. Mr. O'Donnell had been head of client and strategic marketing, consultants, Asia Pacific, for BNP Paribas Investment Partners.
TF Cheng, a managing director with BNP Paribas and head of Asian institutional business development in Hong Kong, and Daryl Ee, executive director and head of institutional sales in Singapore, will assume Mr. O'Donnell's consultant relations duties while a search for a replacement is conducted, said a BNP spokeswoman.
In a telephone interview, John Gee Grant, BlackRock’s London-based head of global consultant relations, said BlackRock’s breadth of product and its substantial buildup of manufacturing in Asia in recent years, made it crucial to better engage the investment consultants in the region who rate those locally managed products.
With a growing number of big investors in Asia, such as sovereign wealth funds, employing investment consultant research, and rising demand for Asian growth assets by investors — advised by those consultants — in markets such as North America, Europe and Australia, now was the right time to hire Mr. O’Donnell to start building BlackRock’s consultant relations effort in the region, he said.