To be an investment banker is to be associated with the work of making large sums of money, and to be Lauro Baja III is to be one of Southeast Asia’s top investment bankers. In fact, the son of controversial former diplomat Lauro Baja Jr has been called the region’s highest-paid investment banker, a rainmaker, and a one-man deal factory—colourful ways of referring to his unique ability to create wealth. It’s this aptitude for deal-making that brought the well-connected Baja to the upper echelons of the Swiss multinational investment bank and financial services company UBS Group AG, where he is now Head of Global Capital Markets for Asia Pacific.

Baja has been with UBS for years—though, according to a 2013 Reuters article, a Singapore-based competitor once tried, but failed, to poach him. “He’s the 10,000-pound gorilla. We’ve tried to hire him, but we can’t afford him.”