Leadership

Balaji V. Swaminathan

Independent Director

 

Bala Swaminathan (Bala) is a Founder of and CEO of a regulated fund management and wealth advisory business in Singapore focusing on credit opportunities and advising accredited investors on their investment portfolio. He is also an investor in early-stage companies. With almost two decades of banking experience in Asia, Bala has a proven track record in building regional businesses and deep expertise in risk management.

 

Prior to this Bala was Westpac Banking Corporation’s President of International between 2012 and 2018 with overall responsibility for Westpac’s operations in Asia, Europe & America, in particular growing the Bank’s footprint and supporting Westpac’s customers doing business internationally.

 

Immediately prior to joining Westpac, Bala worked with Bank of America Merrill Lynch as its Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Global Corporate and Investment Banking, where he was responsible for providing the strategic direction for the bank’s corporate and investment banking businesses in India.

 

Before that, Bala headed up the origination and client coverage business for South and Southeast Asia at Standard Chartered Bank as a Senior Managing Director, where he was responsible for corporate and institutional clients in key markets including Singapore, India and Indonesia. During his time, he also worked briefly in the office of the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank to evolve the inorganic strategy of the Bank during the global financial crisis of 2008.

 

Prior to that, Bala was Senior General Manager and Head of Corporate Bank of ICICI Bank and oversaw the transformation of ICICI from a project finance institution to a commercial bank.

He joined ICICI as its CFO from KPMG India of which he was a founding member. As a Partner at KPMG, Bala was primarily tasked with overseeing the financial sector. Bala began his career as a banking auditor with KPMG in Asia before being promoted to a partner.

 

Bala has been an independent board member on several boards of listed companies in India including JSW Steel, Orient Paper, First Source, Arvind Mills, Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd etc. and has been an advisory board member of Standard Chartered Private Bank and Westpac Banking Corporation.

 

He is a Chartered Accountant as well as a Cost and Works Accountant and has completed an Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. Bala is a Singapore National and lives in Singapore