Standard Chartered made a big fintech hire for its hottest business

Forget investment banking and securities - the steadier transaction banking business is where banks detect the best long term opportunities now. Goldman Sachs is building a cash management operation and Stefan Hoops is the man of the moment at Deutsche Bank. 

Standard Chartered is also busy focusing on its bread and butter business after a strong third quarter. The bank has quietly made new hires for its transaction banking business globally.

Standard Chartered isn't commenting on the new recruits. They're understood to include Kahina Van Dyke, formerly the senior vice president of business and corporate development at Ripple, the San Francisco-based blockchain enterprise payments company. Van Dyke spent less than two years at Ripple after joining June 2018; her LinkedIn profile says she left again this January. Before Ripple, Van Dyke spent two and a half years building a payments team at Facebook in Menlo Park and six years at Mastercard in London.

Van Dyke isn't Standard Chartered's only big transaction banking hire. Sources say Standard Chartered is building out is transaction banking team with big names who previously worked for Deutsche Bank after recruiting Lisa Robins, Deutsche's former head of APAC transaction banking in 2018. Its most recent ex-DB recruit is understood to be Nelius De Groot, who spent 18 years at Deutsche until December 2014, and worked across transaction banking, technology and operations. 

Standard Chartered's other ex-DB recruits include: Rene Keller, who joined as chief information officer (CIO), for corporate, commercial & institutional banking (CCIB) on 2 January; Michael Spiegel, who's joining as global head of trade for transaction banking, based in Singapore; and Mark Price who joined as global COO for the payments business back in April 2018.

In combination, the new recruits suggest a substantial investment in the transaction banking business. Banking intelligence firm Coalition said transaction banking revenues increased three per cent vs. 2018 in the first six months of last year, while banking revenues fell to a 13 year low. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available. Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)