The "awesome" boutique expanding in Asia this year
The Raine Group is setting up an office in Southeast Asia, and it’s already getting its staff into place.
Singapore’s bankers might be queuing up for the chance to work for the boutique. An employee on Glassdoor praised the “fun company culture”. Another called their colleagues “awesome”, and added that the bank had “an emphasis on a solid work/life balance.”
The boutique – which represented Roman Abramovich’s sale of Chelsea Football Club, as well as the Glazers’ sale of Manchester United – hired Jonathan Pflug for its Singapore office back in September.
He joined The Raine Group officially last month. Pflug left Morgan Stanley as an MD and head of the Southeast Asia M&A, after 12 years with the bank. He worked in various government positions for the Singaporean government before that.
The most senior Raine banker in Singapore, however, will be Deborah Mei, one of the boutique’s co-founders. She is head of the bank’s Asian presence, moving from Shanghai to Singapore as the firm shifts headquarters. Mei spent 11 years with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong before starting Raine.
At the Sports Matter conference in September, Raine partner Colin Neville said that “with a lot of capital flow that we’ve seen moving south and into Southeast Asia, we think it’s an opportune time to plant our flag and have some people on the ground here.”
Neville, who is also head of the firm’s sports practice, pointed to the vast array of international events that take place in Singapore, such as the Grand Prix, to show how the region was growing its sports presence. “We’re excited about the growth, we think there’s huge opportunity, and it’s just a matter of time,” Neville said.
However, he underlined at the conference that the bank was interested in the region broadly. “This is the last major market in the world, where you can see a free for all between Alibaba, Tencent, Bytedance on one hand, and the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Netflix on the other,” he said.
Clues for what Raine are looking for in bankers come from its job specification for an associate in Shanghai, the only current job opening we could find. “Positive attitude and strong work ethic,” as well as “strong written and verbal communication skills,” are requirements. Pretty standard stuff. “Global mindset,” needed, too.
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