HONG KONG INVESTMENT NEWS: Top Deutsche Desk Set For HK Move

Wow, after meetings in Florida last week and crushing research-paper deadlines at Harvard - a perfect storm of reach-for-the-baby-aspirin stress - it feels great to be engaged in the simple pleasures of blogging and equity-market research.

There is some very significant news breaking out of New York this morning.

Deutsche Bank is set to move global equity and derivatives trading from New York to Hong Kong.

The move is significant not only because of who leads this division but for the fact it’s the first time anyone can remember a big multinational investment bank relocating such an important trading operation to Asia.

This reflects the bank’s increased focus on Asia-Pacific, which it thinks will overtake Europe in terms of equity trading this year, according to the Financial Times.

The HK operation, both Asian and global, will be run by Noreddine Sebti, who is Swiss.

The FT reports that he is ”very suave” and ”one of the most important non-Americans in the New York trading world.

The move makes great sense because in 2007, the bank saw revenues from its Asian equities business jump by 80%.

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