Samir Assaf: Quality over quantity

IN ADDITION

Fifty years of capital markets Jim Amine Jean-Francois Astier Allegra Berman Mandy DeFilippo Jerry del Missier Bob Diamond Tyler Dickson Eric Dobkin Martin Egan Jim Esposito Peter Hancock Guy Hands Jeremy Isaacs Conor Killeen John McNiven Chris O'Malley Vikram Pandit Hans-Joerg Rudloff John St John Paul Tregidgo Matthew Westerman

Samir Assaf, chief executive of global banking and markets at HSBC, is a relative latecomer to the business.

He is, however, the great survivor of his peer group: the list of investment bank chiefs at the time he took on the role now reads like ancient history: Anshu Jain, Carsten Kengeter, Jerry del Missier, Rich Ricci. They have all moved on long ago while Assaf, who took over the global banking and markets role from Stuart Gulliver when he became CEO, has gone from strength to strength.

“I came late to the capital markets in 2000 because, before moving into banking in 1994 to work in treasury and FX, I had been treasurer of an oil company,” he tells Euromoney in his office overlooking Canary Wharf in London.