For fund managers, yesterday marked the first day they were fully aware of Macquarie Bank's push into Asian broking. The old ING operation it bought, sent out its first emails with research rebranded in the red colours of Macquarie. The acquisition of ING's broking business was completed on Friday.
Macquarie bought an operation of 400 people in one of the most competitive broking markets in the world. Asked why it chose to buy the ING platform, Nicholas Moore, head of Macquarie's investment banking group says We've been growing our business in Asia gradually. We'd established corporate finance operations in Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, and these were all running profitably.
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