MSC Trustees hires Singapore chief

MSC Trustees has appointed two new senior staff in Singapore - a chief executive who joins from GIC and an operations manager.

The firm - which provides trustee and fund administration services to more than 200 funds - expanded into Singapore a couple of years back seeing the city state as the next logical step.

Lian Sar Lim has come on board as chief executive officer joining from Singapore's biggest sovereign wealth fund, where he worked for 11 years.

During that time, he developed the global equities transaction platform, transformed the relationships with external counterparts and ran the New York desk.

Earlier, he worked at Straits Lion Asset Management, where he was a member of the executive management committee and head of business development.

He also oversaw business operations and was involved in compliance, client servicing and research reporting.

A second recruit Matthew Tan has been appointed operations manager.

Tan began his career in sales trading with DBS Bank. He then moved to the wealth management business with Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, Pictet et Cie and Manulife Financial Advisers.

"We welcome Lian Sar as our new local CEO in Singapore and we're delighted our clients will benefit from his significant funds management experience," said MSC Group managing director Matthew Fletcher.

The executive appointments come just as MSC Trustees won approval from the corporate regulator to act as a trustee for debt instruments issued by public companies.

MSC Trustees is the first Australian corporate trustee firm to be appointed trustee under the new general note authority.

The approval means MSC Trustees no longer needs ASIC imprimatur for individual appointments, speeding up time to market for Australian corporates seeing to raise capital from retail debt issues, according to

It is a brand new authority granted by the Australian regulator and follows extensive lobbying by MSC Trustees over seven years.

"This is a fantastic development for Australian companies seeking to raise debt and a positive outcome for retail and wholesale investors," added Fletcher.

"Raising capital from the Australian corporate debt market has presented real challenges to Australian companies, largely because of lack of options due to a lack of understanding and appetite by traditional debt providers and extreme cautiousness by the Australian corporate regulator following the global financial crisis in 2008.

"This defunct market and lack of options present a serious limitation to for Australian companies seeking to raise capital, often requiring the restructuring of capital in less appropriate ways or from more inefficient sources."