Ex-PSE head Sicat to lead ING Bank Manila as Garcia retires

Hans B. Sicat (Photo from his Twitter account)

Former Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) Inc. president and chief executive Hans B. Sicat will head the Manila branch of Dutch banking giant ING when current country manager Consuelo D. Garcia retires in November.

According to a statement issued by ING Bank N.V. on Monday, Sicat will join the bank by the middle of August “to ensure a smooth transition,” as he will take over Garcia’s positions, including as ING Bank Manila’s head of clients.

Garcia’s retirement will be effective Nov. 16.

“ING is grateful to Ms. Garcia for her engaging leadership style and the entrepreneurship that she promoted at ING Bank Manila,” Gerrit Stoelinga, chief executive of ING Wholesale Banking Asia, said. “She always put our clients first. We will miss her dearly and wish her all the best for her well-deserved retirement. We are fortunate to have found a worthy successor in Mr. Hans Sicat.”

ING Bank Manila quoted Sicat as saying that he hoped “to build on and expand the business that Ms. Garcia and the ING global team have successfully established” as “his experience in promoting deeper markets, corporate governance and financial inclusion should be supportive of and complementary to ING’s role in the financial ecosystem.”

Garcia, more popularly known by her nickname Zondy in the banking industry, served as country manager and head of clients for nearly nine years, during which she “played a pivotal role in the divestment of the branch international private banking and asset management businesses pursuant to the bank’s global strategy to focus on commercial and investment banking,” ING said.

Consuelo D. Garcia

“She developed the Philippine business into an award-winning franchise, recognized consistently by other industry groups as the top fixed income and mergers and acquisitions house,” ING added.

Garcia joined ING in 1991 as head of financial markets, “where she steered the bank to a dominant position in market making of Philippine global high yield and credit derivatives and as a top arranger for local debt capital markets.”

As for Sicat, who led the PSE for six years until May this year, ING said he has “more than two decades of experience as an investment banker, having worked for Citigroup and its predecessor firms Citicorp and Salomon Brothers in the Philippines, Hong Kong and New York City.”

“A trained mathematician and economist, Mr. Sicat has been involved in the global capital market for about three decades,” ING noted. /atm