Vinay Gandhi has joined UBS, leaving J.P. Morgan within 2 months of quitting Deutsche Bank. He joined UBS on January 11 as a Managing Director and country team head, India, Intertanational Asia in the wealth management division. He will report to Andreas Reber, regional market manager of India Indochina and global investors APAC.

Vinay Gandhi has nearly 2 decades of banking experience and will head a team of 30 bankers, spread across Singapore and Hong Kong. He will be based in Singapore.

It is possible that J.P. Morgan decided to waive the gardening leave of 90 days, given how short a time he had worked at the bank. Alternatively, UBS may have "bought out" Gandhi's gardening leave as it wanted him to make an early start.

At J.P. Morgan, Gandhi's remit was to cover ultra-high-net-worth Indian clients across the world. So far, no-one has been named to replace him.

Before he joined J.P. Morgan, Gandhi was head of South Asia for private wealth management at Deutsche Bank in Singapore, responsible for the coverage of non-resident Indians (NRI) in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He has also worked at Citi private bank and Commerzbank Private Banking Singapore.

At UBS, Gandhi fills a vacancy created by the departure of Srinivas (Srini) Siripurapu in August last year. Siripurapu left UBS to become head of Southeast Asia and South Asia for Barclays Wealth, the wealth management division of Barclays. He took with him a team of nine UBS private bankers.

UBS has also had to field more recent departures. When Siripurapu left in August, UBS announced that his position would be filled by Vikram Malhotra. But Malhotra has also since departed the bank. And earlier this week, Lee Boon Keng, chief investment strategist for UBS wealth management left for Julius Baer.

In line with the India focus, UBS announced on Monday that Manisha Girotra will serve as chief executive officer and country head for India, to help the bank develop its India strategy and work with the government and regulators.

Private banks are hiring across Asia. Asians are getting richer as their businesses grow. Further, their portfolios have suffered less due to the financial crisis than their counterparts in the western world and they are becoming more open to seeking investment advice from traditional wealth managers. This has led boutique private banks such as Julius Baer and Clariden Leu to increase their Asia coverage, sometimes poaching teams from their larger rivals to kick-start their operations. But bulge-bracket firms such as Citi and UBS are also hiring, not only for replacements but to strengthen their offering.