The Bank of New York Mellon Corp will step up its expansion in emerging markets such as China and India, aiming to raise the non-US share of its revenue to 50 percent in three to five years from 40 percent, Vice Chairman Ronald O'Hanley told Reuters on Friday.
The U.S. bank plans to hire 40 to 50 employees this year for a planned Chinese fund venture, and has been in talks on possible cooperation with China's sovereign wealth fund and its national pension fund.
New York Mellon is also eyeing expansion in India, where it does not yet own an asset-management business.
"The U.S. is the largest market, but non-U.S. markets are growing faster than the U.S.," O'Hanley said in an interview. "We don't have as large a presence in India as we would have for example in China, so we're looking at options right now."
New York Mellon, created in 2007 by a merger between the Bank of New York and Mellon Financial Corp, is among a number of U.S. banks found to have sufficient capital under the government's stress test, and is hoping to repay capital injected by the Treasury under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
The bank has cut its dividend and raised money in the equity and debt markets to be able to repay TARP once it is allowed to, O'Hanley said.
In China, O'Hanley expected a licence would be issued in the next two months for a Shanghai-based fund venture with China's Western Securities, allowing it to manage money directly for Chinese investors.
BNY Mellon Asset Management, the bank's fund unit, is currently an adviser to China Southern Fund Management Co for overseas investment products under the country's Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme, which allows Chinese to invest in capital markets abroad.
It is also in talks with several other Chinese funds seeking cooperation on QDII products, David Jiang, Asia Pacific chief executive of BNY Mellon, said in a separate interview on Friday.
Jiang added that the company expected to obtain a Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) licence this summer, allowing it to invest overseas money in China's strictly controlled capital markets.
