JP Morgan secures $40bn custody client

JP Morgan Treasury & Securities Services (JPMorgan TSS) has secured a $40 billion master custody client, following a tender run by Mercer Sentinel.

The asset servicing business is shortly expected to announce it will become the exclusive administration provider to ING Australia, the ANZ Bank-owned retail funds management business.

The deal means JPMorgan TSS retains the largest client among the 100 to which it gained access following the purchase of ANZ Custodian Services last November. Those clients had a total of $99 billion under custody.

JPMorgan TSS was among a patchwork of custody and administration providers previously used by ING Australia, which includes the Optimix multimanager portfolios (although no longer the team managing them). The third-party providers had included JPMorgan TSS handling global custody, ANZ the domestic custody, and BNP Paribas Securities Services striking unit prices.

JPMorgan TSS recently said it was in the process of hiring 100 additional staff in Australasia, on top of those retained from ANZ Custodian Services, as it claims to have enjoyed a growth spree based around the combination of banking and asset servicing to institutional clients in the region.

A new regional head for JPMorgan TSS was named on Friday, with Thomas DuCharme to be based in Hong Kong, joining after five years running transaction banking for Deutsche Bank in the Asia-Pacific. The Australian-born head of securities services for the region, Laurence Bailey, will report in to DuCharme.