French bank rolls out a re-branded, restructured wealth-management division. BNP Paribas has changed the name of its private-client business from BNP Paribas Private Banking to BNP Paribas Wealth Management and re-organized it within two business lines under division chairman Francois Debiesse.

The new name is supposed to be "a more accurate reflection of the universal dimension of BNP Paribas' private-banking client relationships," according to a company press release.

The Wealth Management Networks part of BNP's wealth-management business, a joint venture with BNP's asset-management division, refers to investment products and private-banking services offered to BNP clients through its retail branches in France, Italy and -- once it completes its takeover of Fortis' Belgian and Luxembourg banks -- in non-Dutch Benelux.

Key clients

Marie-Claire Capobianco will lead BNP's Wealth Management Networks as a joint report to BNP's COO Jean-Laurent Bonnafe and asset-management boss Alain Papiasse. She retains her position as head of BNP's French private-banking operations.

Michel Longhini will be in charge of Wealth Management International the second part of BNP's new-look private-client business. This group focuses on BNP's wealth-management operations in markets where it's not a retail player. For now this means Switzerland, Monaco, the Netherlands, the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, the Gulf, India, China, southeastern Asia and Latin America -- offshore markets in which BNP also does corporate- and investment-banking business.

BNP says it plans to Wealth Management International "through internal growth, acquisitions and strategic partnerships."

Working across both of BNP's private-client business lines to strengthen their "capacity to attract and advise some of the world's largest fortunes" will be the Key Clients group under Olivier Perrain.

Paris-based BNP's private-client businesses accounted for about 200 billion in assets under management at the end of June 2008. The bank says these assets are more or less evenly divided between its two new private-client business lines. -FWR

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