BNY Mellon president Karen Peetz said the bank would look to increase the amount of revenue it is getting from fast-growing Asia, and that it sees "selling investment products to American expatriates in Hong Kong" as one of the ways it hopes to do that.
"It [BNY Mellon] sees an opportunity in this space as non-US banks are increasingly hesitant to offer such products" to Americans, due to the growing regulatory burden of having such customers, the SCMP reported.
In London, a company spokesperson confirmed that targeting Americans in Asia was something the bank is exploring, but played down the idea that the plan was well advanced.
"It would be more correct to say that it is something that we are looking at, rather than something we have definite plans to do," she added.
BNY Mellon, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is the world’s largest custody bank and one of its largest asset managers. It was created in 2006 by the merger of Bank of New York with Mellon Financial Corp.
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In other news involving expatriate Americans, it was reported on Friday that the number of US expats renouncing their citizenships leapt sixfold in the second quarter of 2013, compared with the same period in 2012. Renunciations totalled 1,131 in the three months through June, up from 189 in the same quarter last year, the Federal Register data showed.
In the first half, renunciations touched 1,810, compared with 235 for the whole of 2008, Bloomberg noted, in its report on the data.
The surge in renunciations is widely seen as reflecting the growing difficulties and expense of being an American expat.
