Goldman Sachs Top Southeast Asia Executive Announces His Departure

Harry Naysmith, the head of investment banking in Southeast Asia of Goldman Sachs, has quit the US-based financial services provider to take a role at Citigroup. According to Bloomberg, Naysmith will be the new vice-chairman of banking, capital markets, and advisory for Southeast Asia.

The executive reportedly gave his notice of the departure last week, although both banks declined to comment about the move. Naysmith’s quitting from the banking firm comes in the midst of Goldman Sachs’ plans to strengthen its presence in Southeast Asia. Also, he faced a tough time for the bank when they got a foreign bribery penalty in the United States due to its involvement in the 1MDB investment fund scandal in Malaysia.

Goldman Sachs has been focusing on bolstering the regional strategy with Singapore as its primary focus, targeting mainly wealth management operations. In September 2018, Udhay Furtado quit the financial services provider as co-head of investment banking for Southeast Asia to join Citigroup to lead its equity capital markets division.

Goldman Sachs Q2 2021 Results

In July, Goldman Sachs released its results for the second quarter of 2021. The bank reported $15.39 billion in net revenues during Q2 of 2021, which is 16% higher than the same period in 2020.

According to the results, the bank’s investment banking division saw a jump of 36% in net revenues during Q2 of 2021 compared to the second quarter of 2020. Goldman’s $3.61 billion Q2 net revenues include $1.26 billion from financial advisory, $2.19 billion from underwriting, and $159 million from corporate lending.

Furthermore, the financial services provider participated in a Series D investment round launched by Deserve, a US-based fintech firm, where Mastercard also joined. Founded by Kalpesh Kapadia, former Chief Executive Officer at Equanum Capital Management, Deserve provides digital-first, mobile-centric, highly configurable API and SDK-based credit card solutions. The company plans to use the recent funds to accelerate its mission to modernize the credit card stack.