Swiss banking major UBS is planning to expand in Africa as part of its strategy to boost profit from wealth management business.
The lender globally wants its wealth-management units to contribute half of pretax profit by 2015, compared with 32% a decade earlier, and is targeting African entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals who have at least $3 million to invest, Sean Bennett, the managing director of UBS in sub-Saharan Africa, said in an interview to Bloomberg.
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"Wealth management is key to the Africa franchise. That’s what we lead with. We want to increase our physical presence before year-end and then do more in the next few years," he said.
"When countries grow at 7%, that’s a lot of people starting to make serious money," Bennett said. UBS has "hardly touched the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to banking Africa’s wealthiest, Bloomberg further quoted him saying.
According to reports, Africa may have as many as 200 hidden billionaires operating in the unofficial economy.
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