September has witnessed a lot of career activity among senior professionals in South East and North Asia as well as in Australia. As the month comes to a close here is a summary of the most recent moves. October might not see as much activity, however look out for the senior professionals who have been seeing out their six-month gardening leave taking up new roles.

In Australia:

BlackRock has expanded its distribution team with the appointment of Kate McDermott as new regional sales head. Based in Melbourne, she will report to head of Wealth Advisory James Langlands. McDermott was previously with Aberdeen Asset Management.

Macquarie Group has announced it has filled its vacant chairman position. As of 31st of March 2016, Peter Warne will succeed outgoing chair Kevin McCann, who announced his retirement from the position on September 24. Warne is currently a non-executive director at the group, and also holds board positions at NSW Treasury Corporation, the Australian Office of Financial Management, ALE Property Group and OzForex Group. Warne was also a director at the ASX and the Sydney Futures Exchange.

In Melbourne Credit specialist La Trobe Financial has appointed 25 new staff and expanded to a second floor at its Collins Street headquarters. Fourteen of the 25 new hires, are experienced senior credit analysts and their appointments grow the company's national credit team to 46 loan writers. The company has plans to grow all of its products strongly and expects net assets to increase from $88 million to $100 million by December.

In Hong Kong:

Patrick Kuo has joined the Investment and Acquisitions team at Apollo Global Management, based in Hong Kong. Kuo joins the New York-based alternative asset investment firm from Arch Capital Management.

Liquidnet, the global institutional trading network, announced that Tony Cheung has joined the company as Head of Quantitative Analytics. Cheung is based in Hong Kong and will be responsible for leading this area for Liquidnet in Asia Pacific.

Savills Investment Management (“Savills IM”), the international property investment manager, has strengthened its Hong Kong-based investment team with the appointment of Craig Pearce as Head of Asset Management, Asia. Reporting to Choy-Soon Chua, Managing Director, Craig will be responsible for expanding Savills IM’s Asian platform.  His principal role will be that of asset management in Hong Kong and China, with an oversight role across pan-Asia (together with Yew-Hock Tan in Singapore).

In Singapore:

HSBC have selected Sean Henderson as deputy head of debt capital markets (DCM), Asia Pacific and head of capital financing, Singapore, with immediate effect. Henderson was most recently head of capital financing for HSBC in Australia and New Zealand. He will be based in Singapore.