Standard Chartered Names Shelley Boland Global Head of Property

Standard Chartered has tapped Shelley Boland as its new global head of property to lead management of the bank’s real estate resources worldwide, with the promotion having taken effect on 1 December.

Boland is succeeding Denis McGowan, who is retiring after fourteen years at Standard Chartered, a representative of the London-based bank told Mingtiandi.

On top of the promotion, which expands her former role as Standard Chartered’s head of property for Asia Pacific, Boland will be relocating from Hong Kong to Singapore by January, the representative said.

At the same time, Boland has also assumed additional responsibility as head of property for the bank’s Consumer, Private and Business Banking (CPBB) division, which combines Standard Chartered’s retail and private banking as well as wealth management operations.

Leadership Changes

Having served with the UK bank for more than seven years, Boland has taken on a series of increasingly senior positions with its property division, with a track record in developing and executing property strategies to further its business.

In 2017 Boland began working at the bank as global head of workplace before she was appointed to lead its property unit for Greater China and North Asia with that role expanding to include all of Asia three years later.

Before joining Standard Chartered in 2015, the graduate of Western Sydney University and Charles Sturt University held several management roles in banking and real estate, including working as head of corporate real estate and business services for Asia at Macquarie Group in Hong Kong from 2011 through 2014.

Her recent promotion came less than six months after Standard Chartered in July announced the appointment of Hong Kong-based Raymond Cheng as chief investment officer for North Asia, giving him responsibility for the CIO office’s coverage and capabilities in the region, and representing its views to the bank’s private clients.

Asia Rebound

Standard Chartered in October announced a profit increase for the third quarter thanks to a strong performance from its financial markets business and rising interest rates. Over the period, the UK-based lender saw profit attributable to ordinary shareholders jump 50 percent from a year earlier to $964 million.

The bank’s underlying profit before tax in Asia was $1.06 billion, which was a 15 percent increase from the same period last year.

The bank’s better-than-expected results showed improvement from last year, when it began to downsize its offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. In the first quarter of 2021, Bloomberg reported that Standard Chartered would relinquish eight floors in the Standard Chartered Bank Building in Central and rent out three levels in its Kwun Tong office that it owns.

Around the same time, IWG signed one of its biggest deals in Hong Kong when it struck a global partnership with Standard Chartered for the bank to give its 95,000 employees, including 9,000 in Hong Kong, the option of working from the serviced office provider’s locations instead of in company offices.

In Singapore, Standard Chartered has been reducing its existing office space in the city-state’s  financial district by half by giving up nine floors at Marina Bay Financial Tower 1, according to a Bloomberg report in April this year.