Barclays poaches 3 more private bankers from UBS

Vikram Malhotra, who led a team of UBS bankers in Singapore and Hong Kong serving millionaires of Indian origin, joined Barclays Wealth on Monday as head of South Asia where he will play a similar role, the British bank said in a statement.

He will report to Srinivas Siripurapu, Barclays Wealth's head of Southeast and South Asia, who was his previous boss at UBS. Siripurapu left UBS in August last year with nine members of his team, and was replaced by Malhotra.

Two other ex-UBS bankers, Jagdish Kale and Rohit Nanani, will join Barclays on Feb 24 as directors.

Vinay Gandhi, formerly global head of the non-resident Indian business at JPMorgan Private Bank, has replaced Malhotra, a UBS spokeswoman said.

Asia's private banking industry, which suffered a spate of layoffs at the end of 2008 and early 2009, has recovered in recent months and banks are actively searching for experienced staff to tap the region's growing ranks of millionaires.

In October, RBS Coutts, the private banking arm of Royal Bank of Scotland , lost over 70 of its staff in Singapore, or nearly a third of its headcount, with many leaving to join Swiss bank BSI.

In December, Deutsche Bank hired DBS' head of private banking for South Asia Kwong Kin Mun to take charge of its wealth management business in Southeast Asia.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)