Astbury Marsden moves London Banking Director to spearhead expansion of Asian operations

Astbury Marsden, the leading financial services recruitment firm, has appointed the Director of their Banking Division, Mark O’Reilly, to head up their Asian operations.

Mark O’Reilly has over 13 years’ experience in financial services recruitment, including 3 years in Australia. He joined Astbury Marsden in 2006 from Hudson where he had built up their asset management and recruitment desk from scratch.

Astbury Marsden is particularly well known for their investment banking, fund management and financial services management consultancy work.

Based out of Hong Kong, Mark O’Reilly will continue the expansion of Astbury Marsden’s Singapore and Hong Kong offices.

Mark Cameron, Chief Operating Officer at Astbury Marsden, comments: “Our decision to move such a senior director to Asia is a reflection of how important our work over there already is. We take the future growth of this region’s financial service industry very seriously.”

“Our Singapore and Hong Kong offices were first opened as a response from the increasing numbers of requests we were getting from clients and candidates to help them in that region.

“Ten years ago Asia experience and exposure was nice to have for any high flying candidate or bank – now it is a must have.”

“We are working with an ever growing number of bankers that want to move to the Asia Pacific region. In part that is because financial services is a sector that most Asian countries want to grow whilst some candidates feel it is a sector the UK and US want to shrink.”

“The candidate pool in the region is also getting far bigger.”

“We expect to double staff numbers in Singapore over the course of the next year and expand our team in the new Hong Kong office.”

“We are sure that Mark and his team will consolidate Astbury Marsden’s position as being a key player on the global recruitment stage.”

Mark O’Reilly says: “I am very excited to be involved in Astbury Marsden’s expansion in Asia. Over the years our clients have been increasingly asked us to undertake projects for them in Asia-Pacific – so for me it is great to be working there full time at last.”

“We have a very well connected team in both Hong Kong and Singapore who already working with almost all of the major employers.”
A recent survey, conducted by Astbury Marsden, about preferred locations for financial services staff revealed that Asian cities came far ahead of the more traditional financial centres, with Hong Kong and Singapore being amongst the most favoured destinations. Singapore took 27% of the vote, beating London’s 22% to come top of the poll. Hong Kong secured 20% of the vote, ahead of New York with 19% and Dubai with 13%.

Astbury Marsden is continuing their global expansion with plans to open a new office in Sydney in the first quarter of 2011.