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J O H N
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From the ground up
Not many senior bankers can boast that they built a custody business from
scratch, but HSBC’s global head of custody John Van Verre can.
GC: Can you describe your career journey and how you arrived at
HSBC?
JVV: “Prior to joining HSBC, I was with ABN Amro, where I was
first involved in global cash management, but then was asked
to become involved in a joint venture between ABN Amro and
Mellon Bank for a new global custody venture. We created ABN
Amro Mellon as a separate legal entity with its own banking
license, which was a phenomenal experience because creating
your own bank and being able to run it was the best learning
experience I’ve had in my career.
“Then we got into a situation where both shareholders
were involved in M&A at the same time; ABN Amro with the
famous bid from the three parties (RBS, Fortis and Santander)
and Mellon merging with Bank of New York. Ultimately, ABN
Amro sold its share in the joint venture to BNY Mellon and
ABN Amro Mellon got dissolved as a separate legal entity. It
was at that point that I decided to move on, and instead looked
for something in Asia. I then joined HSBC in Singapore as the
CEO of the trust company and head of securities services for
the country.”
GC: What were some of those lessons learned from starting your
own bank?
JVV: “The first lesson I learned was that it is very complex to
run a bank, because even though it was a relatively small bank
and was focused on one particular business line, you still have
to have the whole banking infrastructure to meet the require-
ments of the regulator. The complexity of running a bank is
massive, and I learned that at an accelerated pace. I also learnt
that the key to success is collaboration. The good thing about the
joint venture was that neither side had a majority stake, which
required people to collaborate. Another lesson I learnt was from
one of my managers earlier in my career that hierarchy does not
work at 5000 miles, i.e. being far removed from where the real is
taking place and not understanding the local implications. This
is also a true statement not just for how HSBC operates but for
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Global Custodian
Fall 2018
the industry as a whole. It is a very complex business covering
multiple jurisdictions, multiple legal entity structures, different
regulatory environments, so if you think you can drive the busi-
ness from a top-down perspective I think you are really missing
the point on where you create the value.”
GC: What was the view of the global custody market in Asia? Is it
different from a London perspective?
JVV: “I wouldn’t say it is different. What you see is that Asia
historically has had less cross-border investment because of
regulation and limitations in terms of the percentage of assets
that could be allocated and invested cross-border. There is a
difference in timing of development of developments, but the
concepts are the same. What you see with the demographics in
Asia and the wealth accumulation is that more money is being
put into products that require custody. Also because of the relax-
ation in cross-border restrictions, there are bigger outflows.”
GC: What makes for a good day in your line of work?
JVV: “A good day is when you get good client feedback, either
that is winning a deal or that clients are happy with the service
they are getting. What makes a good day for me is if our teams
feel that they have contributed to our strategic agenda. This
business is about building sustainable relationships with clients,
so the question is how can you progress with your agenda to be-
come even more relevant to them? If we can help them service
their end-clients, that is something I find very satisfying.”
GC: What are the key changes you have seen across the bank?
JVV: “The ability to integrate services beyond an individual
product is something the bank has worked on pretty hard, not
just from a custody perspective. One of the challenges for clients
investing in complex markets in the Middle East or Asia is the
currency restrictions, for example. We have worked extensively
with our Markets business to create solutions to integrate effi-
cient execution in these kinds of cases as part of our custody of-