presented annually, celebrate the outstanding players in global
wealth, highlighting the trends and developments in the industry
that are shaping the face of tomorrow’s private client
business.
Merrill Lynch has been voted the Outstanding Global Private Bank
for 2007 by the readership of Private Banker International, a
testament to the US wealth giant’s push worldwide to build up its
global private clients business
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Last year, the winner of this award was UBS.
The awards were presented by PBI in Singapore, during the 17th
Wealth Summit. These annual tributes for outstanding performance in
the wealth industry are subject to final assessment by an
independent judging panel. Merrill was singled for embarking “on a
broad and purposeful strategy to be a major player in all the key
wealth markets”.
Increasingly, rival bankers say that Merrill Global Private Client
is among the key competitors they have to beat in their particular
market, according to the tribute. It has $1.6 trillion in assets
under management – ranking with UBS as the world’s biggest private
client manager.
Finalists in this global category were Credit Suisse and
HSBC.
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By GlobalDataThe other PBI awards are:
The Outstanding Regional Private Bank –
Asia-Pacific
Winner: ICICI Bank, India
Finalists: CIMB Investment Bank Berhad, Malaysia;
OCBC Private Bank, Singapore
ICICI Bank is one of the few banks in Asia that is taking to the
fight to the Western home markets of the big guns of global wealth
management. It has a growing international network in Europe, North
America and the Middle East, a great machine for attracting
non-resident Indian money, and of course strength in-depth when it
comes to creating a domestic wealth franchise.
The Outstanding Regional Bank – Europe
Winner: Barclays Wealth
Finalists: Credit Suisse; UniCredit
Barclays Wealth in the past year has become an outstanding
competitor in private banking, and indeed is setting the agenda on
many important issues. Its analysis on key areas such as women’s
specific financial needs and complex inheritance issues, which have
been widely publicised, are showing the way when it comes to modern
‘mass market’ marketing for the wealth manager. Global private
banking needs a global image, an issue that relatively few in the
industry have yet addressed. Barclays is setting the best practice
benchmark in this regard.
Barclays, of course, is the UK’s largest wealth manager and has a
growing client base in the EU, particularly in southern Europe. It
ranks as Europe’s eighth-largest wealth manager, with more than
$185 billion under management.
The Outstanding Regional Private Bank – The
Americas
Winner: Morgan Stanley Global Wealth
Management
Finalists: Northern Trust; Wachovia
James Gorman, president of Morgan Stanley’s wealth division, is
winning plaudits for the rejuvenation job he has carried out since
joining from Merrill Lynch. One example: over the five quarters
prior to his arrival from Merrill, revenue growth at Morgan Stanley
averaged between 4 percent and 6 percent. Over the three remaining
quarters of 2006 it grew at a rate of between 8 percent and 12
percent. Longer term, James Gorman hopes to grow revenues by more
than 10 percent, in a resurgence of the firm as a US, and global,
wealth player.
The Outstanding Wealth Management Bank – Middle
East
Winner: Qatar National Bank
Finalists: National Bank of Abu Dhabi; National
Bank of Dubai
Qatar National Bank has firmly nailed its colours to the private
banking mast. In 2004, it acquired UK wealth manager Ansbacher,
giving it important presence outside the Gulf. Ansbacher is manager
of the QNB Al Watani funds family, which has won plaudits for a
global best practice approach to wealth management and private
banking. QNB has emerged as one the local players that are
increasingly intermediating in the important investment flows
generated in the region as oil prices rise and as local economic
development gains pace.
The Outstanding Private Bank – Customer Relationship
Skills
Winner: UBS
Finalists: Bank Sarasin; Coutts
Few private banks can offer such high standards of client servicing
right around the world, backed by a consistency of approach across
the spectrum – from high net worth to the very wealthiest
ultra-high net worth. UBS is surely the benchmark to beat for this
consistency. In the words of our judging panel, its clients have
“really bought into” the UBS slogan ‘You and Us’. UBS declares
that, in its view, providing advice is a continual process of
adapting clients’ investment strategies precisely to their needs at
every stage of their lives.
The Outstanding Private Bank for Innovation of
Products/Services
Winner: BNP Paribas
Finalists: Barclays ; Credit Suisse
BNP Paribas was last year’s winner of this award, and again is
regarded as an extraordinary powerful force. Financial engineering
is its very special talent, creating best-in-class financial
solutions for clients. This allows BNP Paribas Private Bank freely
to deviate from theoretical benchmarks, thereby offering clients
dynamic management of their assets. Its Equities and Derivatives
division employs literally hundreds of mathematicians. Indeed, the
core BNP Paribas strategy is based on internationalisation and
innovation. In its own words, this bank wants to remain a benchmark
player in terms of technological and financial innovation.
The Outstanding Private Bank for Alternative
Investments
Winner: SG Private Banking
Finalists: BNP Paribas; JPMorgan
SG Private Banking one of that select group of senior players
present in all classes: hedge funds, structured products, private
equity, real estate, mezzanine. The group has put the use of
alternative investments, to optimise the risk adjusted return of a
portfolio, at the very heart of its global wealth structuring and
portfolio management strategy.
The Outstanding Business Private Bank
This award is made for the financial institution that ties private
banking in seamlessly with its other operations, including
corporate and SME business, in order to create seamless services
for businesses and entrepreneurs. The winner in 2006 was
Fortis.
Winner: HSBC Private Bank
Finalists: Credit Suisse; Investec
HSBC has been outstanding in ensuring that wealth management
‘talks’ to its corresponding divisions, including investment
banking and corporate finance, in order to meet the complex needs
of individuals with inter-related personal and business interests.
Asset-liability management skills are indeed marking out those
private banks which are the very forefront of the products and
services needed by today’s sophisticated client.
The Outstanding Global Private Banking
Leader
Winner: Hans de Gier, Chief Executive Officer,
Julius Baer
Finalists: François Debiesse, Director, BNP
Paribas Private Bank; James P Gorman, President and Chief Operating
Officer of the Morgan Stanley Global Wealth Management Group
Under Hans de Gier, the ‘new’ Baer is one of the assured success
stories in private banking of recent years. After the dot.com bust
and pressures on traditional Swiss private banking, it was forced
completely to rethink its model and really went back to
fundamentals, even to the extent of easing the traditional control
exercised by the Baer family.
The renaissance started in the first half of 2006, when Baer
started to see net new inflows of funds for the first time in a
number of years. Then, its remarkable transaction with UBS, buying
three private banks and GAM last year, has proved a transforming
deal. By some measures, Baer now manages more wealthy individuals’
money than Deutsche Bank. Baer has been rapidly using this strength
and its brand to expand its offshore wealth management business
into new growth markets that offer the prospect of strong inflows
of net new money.
Outstanding Asia-Pacific Private Banker
Winner: Barend Janssens, ABN AMRO Asia Head of
Private Banking
Finalists: Hanspeter Brunner, Chief Executive
Officer, Coutts International and Executive Chairman, Asia;
Balakrishnan Kunnambath, Managing Director & Global Market
Manager – Indian Subcontinent, SG Private Banking
(Asia-Pacific)
Milestones achieved as a direct result of Barend Janssens’s
energetic approach at ABN AMRO over the past two years include
strong leadership of an award-winning bank division, an 80 percent
increase in assets under management, a 24 percent increase in staff
numbers, pushing into China and South-East Asian markets and
expanding the Asian branch network.
Outstanding Young Private Banker –
Asia-Pacific
Winner: Keiichi Hirano, Managing Director &
Global Market Manager – Global Japan, SG Private Banking
(Asia-Pacific)
Keiichi Hirano has achieved a remarkable track record in building
SG Private Banking (Asia-Pacific)’s presence in wealth management
for offshore Japanese. His global exposure and fluency in both
Japanese and English have made him the natural choice to head the
Global Japan Division in SG Private Banking (Asia-Pacific), taking
care of offshore Japanese high net-worth individuals.
After heading private banking marketing in SG Private Banking
Tokyo, Keiichi set up the Global Japan division in 2005 in
Singapore, the regional hub of SG Private Banking (Asia-Pacific),
to give high net worth Japanese individuals outside Japan the
opportunity to invest or diversify their portfolio in Asia. The
division has been so successful since its set-up that it now has
more than 15 staff based in Singapore, Hong Kong, Geneva,
Switzerland and soon in London.
Outstanding Young Private Banker – Gulf
Winner: Tarek Khlat, Managing Director, Credit
Suisse UK Ltd, covering the Middle East out of London
Tarek Khlat is one of those select few private bankers who get
access to the inner sanctums across the Gulf. His client list is a
veritable who’s who of prominent Gulf high net worth. His
colleagues describe him as a superstar when it comes to Gulf
coverage at a time when the region is generating billions in
personal wealth as economic development gathers pace, helping by
high energy prices.
Outstanding Young Private Banker – Europe
Winner: Arnaud Leclercq, Executive Vice President,
Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch and Head of Emerging Eastern
Countries
Arnaud Leclercq has developed and implemented a strategic approach
to these emerging CEE countries, bringing skills and competencies
which have been extended to the Asian, Middle East and LATAM teams.
In just over a year he has built the business from scratch, hired
an effective team and achieved exceptional results, including
CHF850 million ($762 million) of assets under management. Arnaud
has established a Lombard Odier footprint in Russia, Ukraine, Czech
Republic, Poland and Kazakhstan.
The PBI Editor’s Special Award
This award recognises special excellence that is not necessarily
covered in the main categories but which, in the opinion of PBI,
recognises a bank has been performing at outstandingly high
levels.
Winner: EFG International
EFG is recognised for creating one of the most effective business
models around. Scooping up top-level teams of bankers and their
clients, organic growth and targeted acquisitions have made EFG
such an impressive ‘new money’ machine in the past couple of years.
It is now the best-in-class in terms of gross margin on assets
under management, at around 120 basis points. EFG, more than most
in our wealth industry, is today punching well above its
weight.
