Another foreign bank's subsidiary in China is welcoming a female chief executive.
On June 8, Singapore-headquartered UOB announced that the current CEO of its Hong Kong Branch, Zheng Jun, will assume the roles of President & CEO of UOB China, succeeding Foo Mau Zaan who is retiring this year. The appointment will take effect on July 1, 2026.
There are already several female presidents leading the China subsidiaries of foreign banks, including Lu Jing at Standard Chartered Bank, Zheng Sizhen at DBS Bank, and Lin Huihong at Hang Seng Bank. With Zheng Jun's appointment at UOB, Shanghai's landscape of foreign bank headquarters in China gains another female leader.
Leadership Change at UOB China
The incoming leader, Zheng Jun, possesses deep professional experience in both the mainland and Hong Kong markets, which aligns closely with UOB China's core strategic focus on cross-border finance and corporate banking.
Her public resume shows she graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a degree in International Finance and has over 20 years of hands-on and management experience in banking across the mainland and Hong Kong. Early in her career, she worked at Standard Chartered Bank, where she gained extensive experience in wholesale and investment banking, building mature expertise in core business operations, team management, and client service at a foreign bank.
In 2018, Zheng Jun joined UOB China as Head of Wholesale Banking, overseeing the full spectrum of corporate business segments including corporate banking, commercial banking, financial institution partnerships, structured trade and commodity finance, transaction banking, and investment banking. She was deeply involved in building and expanding the corporate banking system at UOB China, playing a key role in the iteration and upgrading of its core corporate business.
In March 2024, she was transferred to become CEO of UOB Hong Kong Branch. During her two-year tenure there, she focused on deepening the bank's presence in Hong Kong's cross-border financial market, solidifying the business foundation for collaboration between the group's mainland and Hong Kong operations, and gaining mature practical experience in cross-border trade finance and regional investment and financing services.
UOB has outlined the core focus of Zheng Jun's new role. She will be fully responsible for the overall business operations, daily management, and strategic implementation at UOB China. Her mandate includes continuously enhancing cross-border financial service capabilities, strengthening the foundation for localized development, leveraging the group’s Southeast Asian network advantages to support Chinese and international companies in their regional expansion, and consistently facilitating trade and investment flows between China and ASEAN.
Concurrently, Dong Qingxian, Head of UOB Korea, will take over as CEO of the Hong Kong Branch, ensuring a smooth transition and continuity of strategy for these key positions.
The retiring leader, Foo Mau Zaan, has been with UOB China for nearly a decade and has been a key driver of the institution's localization and financial cooperation between China and Singapore. Since becoming President & CEO of UOB China in December 2016 and joining the board as an Executive Director in January 2017, he has long been steering the bank's strategic adjustments and business layout. He also served as a director of Hengfeng Bank, deeply advancing the strategic cooperation and business synergy between UOB and Hengfeng Bank.
In recognition of his years of work in Shanghai and his significant contributions to China-Singapore financial exchanges, Foo Mau Zaan received the Shanghai "Magnolia Memorial Award" in December 2023, gaining official recognition in the local financial sector. During his tenure, UOB China completed its strategic refocus, gradually divesting homogeneous retail banking operations and concentrating core resources on cross-border finance and wholesale corporate banking, establishing a differentiated competitive path in China.
As the wholly-owned subsidiary of UOB in China, UOB China has been operating in the mainland market for over 40 years. Headquartered in Shanghai with a branch network covering key domestic economic regions, it primarily focuses on wholesale banking and financial markets business. It leverages the group's Southeast Asian network to build a financial bridge for cross-border services between China and ASEAN.
In terms of equity structure, UOB has a long-standing relationship with Hengfeng Bank. It completed a strategic investment in 2008 and participated in a capital increase for Hengfeng Bank in 2019, subscribing to 1.8614 billion shares. It currently holds a 3% stake in Hengfeng Bank and has a board seat to participate in governance. The two parties have implemented several cross-border financial cooperation projects focusing on areas like port shipping and bulk commodity trade.
Operationally, in 2025, UOB China completed key actions under its core strategy of "exiting retail, focusing on corporate, and strengthening cross-border." Its full-year operations were characterized by a clear optimization of structure and focus on core businesses. Based on the long-term losses and resource dispersion of its retail operations, UOB China formally initiated the transfer of its entire personal banking business in 2025, reaching an agreement with Fubon Bank (China) to transfer all personal accounts, deposits, loans, and wealth management-related personal business out of its system. This transfer was successfully completed in the third quarter of 2025.
This divestment marked UOB China's complete departure from a full-license business model, allowing it to fully focus on its three core businesses: wholesale corporate banking, cross-border finance, and financial markets. This move fundamentally reversed the situation where retail operations had been a drag on overall profitability.
Looking at the overall operational results for 2025, the optimization of the business structure has driven a steady recovery in the bank's operating quality. With the complete exit of inefficient retail operations, resource concentration at UOB China has improved significantly. The contribution of corporate and cross-border core businesses to revenue has further expanded, overall profit stability has strengthened, and its differentiated competitive advantages have become more pronounced.
Female Leadership Prominent Among Foreign Banks in Shanghai
Zheng Jun's appointment further strengthens the ranks of female core management at foreign banks operating in China, adding another female leader to the helm of a major foreign bank in Shanghai. Previously, the China subsidiaries of three major foreign banks—Standard Chartered, DBS, and Hang Seng—were already led by female presidents, forming a new landscape for high-quality development in the foreign banking sector.
Lu Jing, President, CEO & Vice Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank China, officially assumed her role in August 2024, bringing 30 years of senior banking experience. She joined Standard Chartered China in 2014, having held key positions such as Managing Director of Corporate & Institutional Banking and Deputy President. She has long focused on local corporate finance and cross-border investment and financing. During her tenure, she has continued to solidify Standard Chartered China's market advantages in cross-border finance and foreign investment banking in China, promoting steady development of core businesses.
Zheng Sizhen, President of DBS Bank China, has many years of experience in the financial industry, aligning closely with China's market and opening-up trends. She has led the iteration and upgrade of DBS China's business, focusing on two core areas: cross-border finance and green finance. She has continuously promoted digital transformation of operations, fully leveraging the Southeast Asian resource advantages of its Singapore parent company to strengthen financial linkages and business connectivity between China and ASEAN markets.
Lin Huihong, President of Hang Seng Bank China, possesses mature experience in the localized management of foreign banks. During her tenure, she has focused on serving the real economy, deepening the integrated market of the mainland and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. She has prioritized the implementation of specialized services like the Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect and supply chain finance, continuously contributing to the connectivity and two-way opening of financial markets between the mainland and Hong Kong.
The concentration of female executives in charge of core operations at foreign banks in China is both a natural outcome of the industry's professional and specialized talent evolution and an important reflection of foreign banks adapting to localized operations and deepening their presence in specialized sectors in China. Behind this industry phenomenon is the support of policy dividends from China's ongoing and deepening financial opening-up.
In recent years, the People's Bank of China and the National Financial Regulatory Administration have held special symposiums for foreign banks, consistently signaling stable support for high-level financial opening-up, providing policy support for the transformation and development of foreign banks in China. The symposium for foreign financial institutions held by the People's Bank of China in November 2024 explicitly stated the intention to establish a regular communication mechanism with foreign institutions, stabilize their confidence in developing in China, and fully leverage the professional advantages of foreign banks in areas like cross-border finance, wealth management, and international risk control to serve the high-quality development of the real economy.
In November 2025, the National Financial Regulatory Administration held another symposium for foreign financial institutions, further detailing measures for implementing opening-up policies. The regulator clearly stated it would continue to relax restrictions on foreign banks' business operations in China, replicate and promote financial opening-up experiences from free trade zones, and support foreign participation in various financial innovation pilots.
Overall, as China's financial market opening-up becomes more normalized and deepens, foreign banks are moving past the phase of extensive expansion and fully entering a cycle of refined, specialized, and localized development. Foreign institutions represented by UOB, Standard Chartered, DBS, and Hang Seng are continuously scaling back inefficient operations, focusing on their core strengths in cross-border and corporate banking, deepening their presence in the Chinese market, and aligning with China's two-way financial opening.
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