Hot on the heels of its acquisition of adGENIE last week, Ve Interactive has today announced the opening of a new office.

The UK-founded e-commerce conversion specialist has opened a south east Asia headquarters in Hong Kong, and Charles Allard has been appointed as regional CEO.

The new hub is part of a continuing multimillion pound investment programme by Ve into the ASIAPAC area.

Ve’s Co-founder and CEO, David Brown, said with Tomas Olsson in Tokyo and now Charles Allard in Hong Kong, Ve has two ‘highly successful and seasoned executives’ building out its ASIAPAC operations.

More than 100 new staff

Allard said the search for more than 30 staff for each of the Tokyo and Hong Kong offices is now a key focus, in order to deliver the full Ve proposition across the ASIAPAC region.

Ve expects the ASIAPAC offices to have more than 100 staff by the end of the year.

“Establishing international operations requires significant investment and the creation of a domestic infrastructure in order to able to service those markets professionally, as well as to ensure responsible and locally compliant data handling,” Brown said.

The office is Ve’s third office in the region – following the opening of its Shanghai office in 2013 and its Tokyo ASIAPAC headquarters which opened earlier this year.

Allard will be based in Hong Kong and from there he will shortly establish operations in Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia; to serve the south east Asia region.

Allard will be working on this initiative in partnership with the Tokyo office, which will next be overseeing the opening of an office in South Korea.

Soon to beat North America

Brown said according to Forrester Research, ASIAPAC e-retail sales will soon outstrip North America and Europe combined. He said by 2018 online sales will exceed three-quarters of a trillion dollars across the five regions.

Mobile commerce has been a big driver and significant players like Alibaba, Jingdong and Rakuten LinkShare have dominated the online marketplace.

Allard spent 25 years in Asian finance and while working for one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Winton Capital, he launched the first foreign CTA fund in China.‎

“Our first key staff are already on board in Hong Kong and are about to graduate from the Ve Interactive training programme.”

See below for more stories on Ve Interactive:

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