Lloyds TSB and Wachovia Bank have lost two key staff to ANZ. Peter Sargent has left Lloyds TSB in London to become head of trade for Europe and America at ANZ, while Bruce Alter becomes commodity and trade finance head for Asia.

In this newly created regional role Sargent will aim to continue to drive the bank’s commodity and trade finance activity across the region as well as identifying and capitalising on new areas for growth.

“Our commodity and trade finance business in the region has focused primarily on commodity traders and it has consistently delivered strong results and the opportunity exists to broaden the scope of our activities whilst further capitalising on the strength of our global trade business, with representation in over 30 countries,” says John Murphy, global head of trade at ANZ in Melbourne.

Sargent joins from Lloyds TSB, where he has been the head of international trade finance for the past four years.

Sargent has an impressive CV in trade, having held senior roles with Citigroup and ABN AMRO before Lloyds TSB. In addition to his trade experience Sargent has also a strong background in credit and risk management having established Creditanstalt’s credit and risk team in London.

Alter joins ANZ from Wachovia, where he was head of international trade finance. In this role he led Wachovia’s trade business for OECD countries, as well as being responsible for Asia trade flows related to large US retailers.

Alter’s trade career started with Bank of Boston in 1987, gaining extensive experience in Asia whilst working with Citigroup in Taiwan and the Philippines in the 1990s, where he held trade product and sales head roles.

He later joined JPMorgan and spent six years there from 1999-2005 based in Hong Kong and Singapore, originally as a marketing manager for Greater China, and then as the head of trade, Asia.

In this new senior trade leadership role, Alter will lead the commodity and trade finance activity across Asia, which represents one of the major growth areas for ANZ, claims Murphy.

“Our commodity and trade finance business in Asia has performed very strongly over the last three years, and we now have a significant opportunity to grow the business and cement ANZ’s position as a leading trade finance bank in the region,” he says. “Bruce’s immediate priority in the role will be to identify new opportunities for growth in the Asian region and review how we are organised to capitalise on the large growth opportunities that exist.”

ANZ itself lost a few staff to Mizuho Bank recently, namely Bill Froggatt, previous head of international commodity trade finance, EMEA, who is now head of global trade finance, EMEA, at Mizuho in London (see GTR, Jan/Feb 2007, 14). Alan Sweeting and Peter Litherland have also moved from ANZ to Mizuho.