Family Office
UBS sells Swiss-focused wealth unit
Baer gets three local private banks, a boutique asset manager and
a new CEO. UBS has agreed to sell SBC Wealth Management to Julius
Baer. In exchange for SBC, a holding company for UBS' four
Swiss-based, "independent" wealth management firms, UBS will get
about $3.2 billion "in cash and cash equivalents" and a 21.5%,
non-voting stake in Baer.
SBC's chairman Johannes de Gier is slated to leave UBS and become
CEO of Baer once the deal is done. Raymond Baer will stay on as
chairman of Baer.
The merger nearly doubles Baer's staff from 1,800 to 3,500. Baer
says it expects to see that number decrease through natural
attrition through over the next few years.
SBC holds three private banks -- Lugano-based Banco di Lugano,
Zurich-based Ehinger & Armand von Ernst, Geneva-based Ferrier
Lullin -- and Zurich-based alternatives manager GAM, which has
nine offices worldwide and about $37 billion in assets under
management.
GAM will keep its name; the three private banks will be
re-branded as Julius Baer private bank branches.
The move stands against a backdrop of consolidation in
Switzerland's fragmented private banking business. Swiss banks
have seen slow growth in recent years, partly the result of
successful efforts by foreign governments - especially in Europe
- to repatriate high-net-worth assets from Switzerland, a
traditional banking haven.
Zurich-based UBS, meanwhile, has reacted to a shrinking domestic
market by setting its sights abroad. Over the past several years
UBS has roughly doubled the size of its overall private-banking
operations in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.
In addition to such organic growth in Europe, UBS has been busily
buying up wealth management boutiques and regional
private-banking concerns the world over. Since May 2003, when it
acquired Lloyds Bank in France, UBS has purchased Merrill Lynch
's German private banking operations as well as Munich-based
Sauerborn Trust, the U.K. firms Laing & Cruickshank and Scott
Goodman Harris, Luxembourg's American Express Bank, Dresdner Bank
's Latin American wealth-management business, and - note - Julius
Baer's wealth-management business in North America. -FWR
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