BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has appointed Tomoko Ueda as its new chief operating officer for Asia Pacific, effective September 3, according to a company statement on Thursday.
Ueda will relocate to Hong Kong from Tokyo and oversee all business operations in the region and lead the finance, corporate strategy & development teams. Ueda will report to BlackRock’s head of Asia Pacific Susan Chan.
She succeeds James Raby, who is relocating to New York to take on the role of global head of compliance.
Ueda joined BlackRock in 2022 as Asia Pacific head of corporate strategy & development. Before joining BlackRock, she was responsible for strategy and finance at Nikko Asset Management in Japan. She has also had stints with Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.
The move follows a series of recent appointments by BlackRock. In June, the firm appointed a head for its private credit investments in Southeast Asia to be based out of Singapore, citing that the region was a promising market for the asset class. Yik Ley Chen will handle part of the firm’s $85 billion global private debt platform.
In the same month, BlackRock hired Mohammed Al Fahim from Goldman Sachs as its new managing director and head of the United Arab Emirates to run the firm’s client business in the country.
Headquartered in New York, BlackRock manages over $10 trillion in assets on behalf of central banks, sovereign wealth funds, multilateral entities, public pension funds, and government ministries and agencies.
The investment firm’s assets under management (AUM) hit a record $10.65 trillion in the second quarter of the year from rising client asset values and more capital being allocated to its exchange-traded funds.
Last month, BlackRock acquired Preqin for $3.2 billion in cash to complement its Aladdin tech business, which is a portfolio management software.
