The sale of Bank of America’s (BofA) Merrill Lynch’s global
private wealth management unit is reportedly attracting the
interest of Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse, Bank Julius Baer and
UBS.
Looking to expand their international wealth management
operations, the banks have entered into an auction to acquire BofA
Merrill Lynch’s wealth division, the FT reported today.
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Merrill Lynch’s non-US operations unit has about $90bn assets
under management and serves clients across Europe Asia and South
America.
People familiar with the matter told the FT that the unit could
fetch more than $3bn.
All the banks involved declined to comment on the matter.
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By GlobalDataWho will get it?
Out of the rumored bidders, Julius Baer has been the most active
recently in terms of international business expansion.
In May 2011 Julius Baer bought a 30% stake in Brazilian
independent wealth manager GPS, while in 2012 it opened a
representative office in Tel Aviv and hired twenty people in
Switzerland to better cover the Middle East market.
Moreover, following an internal report predicting Asia’s wealth
to triple by 2015, in 2011 the Swiss bank acquired Macquarie
Private Wealth Asia, opened a representative office in Shanghai and
launched $100m China Fund to give its private banking clients
direct access to the country’s A-share market.
Reservations from UBS and Credit Suisse?
Both UBS and Credit Suisse have been trying to contain costs in
the past 24 months and have adopted a less aggressive expansion
strategy.
UBS latest international acquisition is dated April 2010, when
the Swiss bank re-entered the Brazilian market following its
acquisition of Brazilian brokerage firm Link Investimento.
Credit Suisse latest purchase is more recent, as the bank
completed the buy out of HSBC’s private banking business in Japan
in June 2012.
Nevertheless Credit Suisse has also integrated its subsidiary
Clariden Leu in a bid to save around CHF200m ($218m) annually and
has streamlined its branch network in Italy with the closure of 16
branches.
