Former RBS general counsel Dan Williams has resurfaced as UBS’ Asia Pacific wealth management general counsel, after leaving the Scottish bank in the wake of a costs-cutting review earlier this year

Williams was previously a lawyer at Clifford Chance and Morgan Stanley before starting a number of GC roles at the Scottish bank, including for equities in 2008 and corporate and institutional banking in 2017, the role he left to start at UBS at the end of March.

Williams will sit on the management committee of global wealth management GC Maria Leistner, and will report to GCs Markus Diethelm and APAC president Kathryn Shih, the former assistant vice president of Citibank in Hong Kong. He will split his time between Singapore and Hong Kong.

It is thought Williams’s departure was influenced by a cost-cutting review launched by RBS in the summer of 2016 into its 400-strong legal team. In March of the same year the bank cut almost 1,600 jobs across the business. Williams was not directly replaced, but his duties were taken over by James Esposito, a managing director at the bank and GC for the Americas.

Williams will take over from Frances Wong, a former partner at Clifford Chance who was previously the GC representative for the APAC region. Wong continues in her role as the Hong Kong GC and will continue to act as a senior lawyer in the APAC region.