This week it's wealth-industry news from Europe, the Gulf and eastern Asia. Swiss private banks are getting pinched in the credit contraction. New clients are staying away, and as stock market declines vaporize assets, wealth managers in Europe are earning less in fees.

"The growth story is over," Bear Stearns equity analyst Christopher Wheeler told the Guardian newspaper. "What we're talking about are 5% to 15% declines in pre-tax profit" -- which he goes on to characterize as "a small downturn" after "a very strong period of above-average growth."

Private-banking revenue accounts for about one third of income for leading players UBS and Credit Suisse. With the MSCI global index down by about 7% for the year, both Zurich-based banks are likely to see a continuation of the balance-sheet woes they -- and many other big-name financial-service firms -- started seeing late last year.

In a recent report Goldman Sachs says it sees Swiss private banks' earnings per share slipping 4% to 6% through this year and 2009. "For Credit Suisse and UBS this could undermine a key remaining pillar of support for the share price," the Goldman report adds. But the trouble goes beyond UBS and Credit Suisse.

Wealthy investors in Europe are backing away from equities in favor of low-margin (and low fee) money-market funds, according to the Guardian. The same shakiness seems to be making complex investments an even tougher sell: Switzerland has seen a 14% negative turnover in structured products so far in 2008.

Barclays

In another Switzerland-related move, Barclays Wealth has made Michael Demirel its new head of commercial operations for its international private-banking unit. He had been head of private banking at Citibank Switzerland .

At Barclays, Geneva-based Demirel will be responsible for sales, business development and client-relationship management as a report to Gerard Aquilina, head of international private banking for London-based Barclays.

"The international private-banking business has expanded significantly over the past eighteen months, and we seek to build on this expansion in both existing and new markets," says Aquilina.

Another Carnegie

Per Axman, head of asset management and private banking at Stockholm-based bank Carnegie, is leaving the firm just as its new CEO Mikael Ericson gets set to take office.

"Per Axman has put the wealth management business on the right track and the work will continue at full speed. I would like to thank Per Axman for all his efforts during his time at Carnegie", says Carnegie's acting CEO Anders Onarheim.

Carnegie says its management and board are in the process of putting a fatter line between its wealth-management and investment-banking businesses in the name of streamlining.

Swedish Carnegie -- whose full name is D. Carnegie & Co. -- has nothing to do with the nineteenth-century U.S.-Scottish industrialist Andrew Carnegie or his son Dale Carnegie. Rather, it was founded as a trading factory in Stockholm in 1803 by a Scot called David Carnegie.

DundeeWealth

Speaking of countries with long winters, Toronto-based DundeeWealth has launched a suite of six Canada-focused funds for distribution to investors in the European Union.

"Our offerings in Europe will allow investors to benefit from our country's strong capital markets and global resource expertise," says DundeeWealth's CEO David Goodman.

The funds -- covering things like Canadian growth companies, Canadian small caps and precious metals -- are distributed by the firm's Luxembourg-based subsidiary DF Investments.

eXimius

Luxembourg-based Compagnie de Banque Privée (CBP) has selected Thomson Financial's eXimius technology as the basis for its front-office wealth-management platform.

"At CBP we want to combine Luxembourg's decades-old private banking tradition with a strong focus on performance and transparency," says Marc Hofmann, managing director of CBP. "For us it was important to select a vendor that really understood our needs."

According to Peter Schramme, head of private-banking and wealth-management at Thomson Financial, the CBP win "is testimony to our focus on customer care combined with continued investment to ensure Thomson eXimius can be customized to meet the unique needs of our clients."

Thomson Financial is a unit of Thomson Reuters .

I'm telling you

UBS may be having a tough time in other markets, but it's keen to shore things up in Asia. For example, it's just added two offices to its wealth-management network in Taiwan. The new branches will bring its tally to three in Taiwan and 18 in six East Asian countries.

"Taiwan will remain a very important market for wealth management," Rory Tapner, chairman and chief executive for UBS, Asia Pacific, told Reuters last week. "We have 380 staff in Taiwan. I'm telling you we don't have that kind of scale anywhere else."

After Japan and China, Taiwan is East Asia's biggest wealth management market. Among other foreign firms providing wealth-management services there are Citigroup , HSBC , Standard Chartered and AIG .

Last year, UBS announced its plans to double its private banking assets in Taiwan by 2009. "Ninety percent of our potential clients are entrepreneurs," says Kathryn Shih, head of UBS Wealth Management, Asia Pacific.

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley has put Leslie Menkes, formerly its head of its Private Wealth Management division in Asia and Australia, in charge of onshore PWM for all of the wirehouse's Asian region -- in effect, the geographic region east of the Persian Gulf, not counting Russia, and stretched to include Australia and New Zealand.

"Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world for the private wealth-management industry," says Charles Mak, Morgan Stanley's overall head of wealth management -- onshore and offshore -- in Asia. "With nearly 20 years of experience in the business, and having originated many of our differentiated offerings, Les is well-positioned to drive our growth initiatives."

Singapore-based Menkes will oversee the expansion of the Morgan Stanley's private-client business in the region while continuing in his role as regional head of client solutions, where he will oversee managed products and capital markets businesses. His new role also calls for him to join the executive committee of Morgan Stanley PWM.

Su-Shan Tan -- formerly head of Citi Private Bank's business in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei until she joined Morgan Stanley in 2005 -- will take Menkes' place running PWM in southeast Asia and Australia.

Trust Arabian style

As more families in the Persian Gulf region of the Middle East opt for locally-regulated and managed trusts, Volaw Trust and Corporate Services , a trust company based in Jersey in the Channel Islands, has expanded its services in the region.

"Private trusts enable higher net worth families to invest more sensibly and not rely too heavily on real estate and other markets, safeguarding wealth for future generations," says Karl Bekusch, senior executive officer for Volaw's Dubai, U.A.E., branch . "The region's growth as a financial center has enabled companies like Volaw to now offer locally based trusts, which enable consolidated management of family assets here in the region."

Led by the oil-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council -- a customs union of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- the Middle East is one of the world's fastest-growing markets for high-net-worth wealth creation.

Bekusch oversees a team that specializes in Shariah-compliant financial structures for collective investment funds, property-financing structures and estate-planning purposes.

"Better customer service and increased peace of mind are further benefits of locally-managed trusts, and we predict robust growth in this sector as more families recognize the value of their investments being managed in the region rather than off-shore," says Bekusch. -FWR

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