By Lawrence White

LONDON (Reuters) -Standard Chartered has created a dedicated team covering private equity firms, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, as part of a wider drive in its investment bank to win more business from financial clients, the bank said on Thursday.

The bank will appoint a global head of financial sponsors in due course, it said, reporting to Molly Duffy and Jerry Zhang, its global co-heads of financial institution coverage, with Duffy leading the financial sponsors team until then.

The team will initially be comprised of around 25 bankers, with some external hires to come, and will be based in New York with hubs in London and Dubai, StanChart said.

The move signals the importance the Asia, Africa and Middle East-focused StanChart places on growing its income from other financial firms, which the bank said currently account for 51% of its total investment banking income and which generate higher returns on average.

It also serves as a contrast to rival HSBC which earlier this year slashed its U.S. and European M&A and equity capital markets businesses, part of its biggest investment banking retrenchment in a decade as it focuses even more on Asia.

While Wall Street banks have dominated global investment banking league tables in recent years, Wall Street bosses now fear an anti-American backlash amid President Donald Trump's trade war that could hurt their business.

StanChart's push into the world of U.S. financial clients is the latest in an overhaul of its investment banking coverage model, which included the creation of a new banking team to cover big cross border deals, reported by Reuters last September.

The bank is stepping up efforts to serve private equity clients in particular as well as targeting banks, insurers and asset managers, Sunil Kaushal, co-head of corporate and investment banking at StanChart, said.

The announcement on Thursday coincides with a presentation on investment bank strategy to investors, the latest in a series of such presentations aimed at explaining its overall business strategy in greater detail.

(Reporting By Lawrence White, editing by Sinead Cruise)