WealthBriefing Talks to Legendary FX Specialist Charles-Henri Sabet: What’s he Got Planned for Private Clients?

Stephen Harris

22 March 2005

Synthesis is a Swiss bank with a difference. Firstly, it is run by its charismatic and original founder, the highly successful foreign exchange trader, Charles-Henri Sabet. Secondly, it is a bank that is stuck to its very strong trading roots without venturing into other fields such as concierge services that other Swiss banks offer. Veteran foreign exchange broker Paul Graham-Clarke told WealthBriefing that Mr Sabet was, in 1985, Pro World Champion backgammon player and followed this with an extremely successful period of foreign exchange trading. “He was a man with the Midas touch” he said. Mr Sabet was part of the very strong Swiss Banking Corporation’s foreign exchange team in Geneva before he set up Trading & Commercial Consulting in 1991, specialising in foreign exchange, options and interest rate trading. In 2000 TCC changed its name to Synthesis Bank and last year it launched TradingFloor, a secure 24-hour trading platform, which Mr Sabet believes fills a gap in the market that was waiting to be filled. The technology behind the platform has been provided by Saxo Bank, where streaming prices are contributed by a wide range of major banks, including UBS and Deutsche Bank. Mr Sabet told WealthBriefing in a recent interview in Geneva: “Prices are completely transparent and no bias is shown to particular clients whose positions or trading record may be known to the bank.” Market conditions though may produce bias. Streaming liquidity is offered on any trade up to €20 million . For trades above this level, the average is a five or six second delay for a dealer to confirm the price. Synthesis Bank is targeting high net worth individuals, asset managers, institutional investors and hedge funds with the new platform. The current marketing campaign is attracting individuals with minimum SFr15,000 to trade. The service offers investors two levels of contact. Firstly, there is a 24 hour online “chat”, which disseminates the bank’s views on the markets covered, and secondly any client is free to speak directly to one of the bank’s dealers. The trading platform has been very well-received by the market. John Dean, managing director of currency manager Currency Insight in London and a veteran foreign exchange expert himself told WealthBriefing “TradingFloor’s prices are very competitive and the user interface is much better than others seen by us”. The bank is also well known for its asset management skills in foreign exchange, in particular a multi-manager currency fund which blends together the differing investment styles of the world’s top performing currency managers. “Plans are well-advanced for a currency fund aimed at the Swiss market—this will be launched in two to three months time,” said Mr Sabet. Synthesis will also soon offer a range of discretionary model portfolios that clients will be able to activate or deactivate online. In so doing, the bank is aiming at clients who do not want to take an active role in the management of their portfolios but who want to continually monitor their progress and the active investor who wants to benefit from the bank’s asset allocation strategy. “We make no money on the spreads that are offered to clients, our spreads are very finely priced to attract volume on our system,” said the former backgammon world number one.