GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Pictet et Cie in Geneva, one of the country’s largest wealth and asset management banks, hit back hard Sunday night 6 May after two Swiss newspapers, in their print editions, claimed the bank is being targeted by the US Justice Department. Eleven other Swiss banks are under investigation by the US government for allegedly helping US-based American clients hide their money from the taxman in Swiss bank accounts. The Pictet case is different, dating back to one specific incident related to an external asset manager for whom the bank managed funds; the bank says it reported fully on the affair in 2010 under the terms of the Swiss-US treaty covering requests for judicial assistance.
Bloomberg reports that “The company ‘vigorously’ rebuts any allegation it is being targeted by U.S. tax authorities, including the Internal Revenue Service, Pictet said in an e-mailed statement today. “Pictet confirms that no accusation has been levelled against it by the U.S. authorities, including the IRS,” information confirmed by Reuters.
In other banking news Patrick Odier, president of the Swiss Bankers Association told RTS public television that Switzerland needs the new tax deal negotiated with Germany to make it through that country’s parliament, for Switzerland as a financial centre to development and jobs to be saved.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss banks take four out of the 10 top slots in Euromoney‘s annual ranking of international private wealth managers, published 8 February. The number one place this year goes to Credit Suisse, which bumped UBS out of the place it has held since the rankings were created in 1994. UBS is now third, with HSBC remaining in second place. Zurich’s Bank Julius Baer is seventh and Geneva’s Pictet is tenth. The list is created by combining performance figures with nominations; more than 1,800 nominations were received this year.
Figures published in January 2009 by the Swiss Bankers Association show Switzerland as the global leader in offshore private banking money, with 27 percent of the world market. Other top players, such as the US and the UK, continue to lag well behind.
The news that Swiss banks are still pulling in large amounts of private wealth comes on the heels of several media reports in recent days that suggest Swiss banking has taken a severe battering. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) 31 January wrote of a “renewed assault” on Swiss banks, once it became clear that Germany was likely to buy bank client data stolen from a Swiss bank.
But the US newspaper a week later wrote that the “gloom on Swiss banks looks overdone”, saying that Germany’s threats are legally dubious and most likely designed a “ruse” to frighten clients. This plus the US-bank UBS court case in 2009 “must be seen in perspective.
Mixed signals from banks, for US citizens in Switzerland
Updated 01:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss banks have become more cautious in their relations with US citizens in the wake of problems the country’s largest bank, UBS, ran into in 2008 with the IRS over unreported income on the part of some of its clients. GenevaLunch, in a survey of several Lake Geneva area banks, found that without exception the banks say they do not discriminate against US citizens, and they continue to welcome new accounts. Stories nevertheless abound in Switzerland of US citizens who received letters in early 2009 from their banks saying their accounts were being closed – but few of of these people will speak openly about such letters, in part because the IRS tax authority encourages citizens to report on others who are not “compliant” in filing taxes as well as listing all worldwide assets.
US Ambassador Beyer suggests UBS could turn over fewer names
A GenevaLunch reporting team this week spoke with several people to determine the extent to which the personal banking problem is real or a recent urban myth. The team talked to seven of the eight banks which returned its calls and to a number of US citizens resident in Switzerland, as well as with members of American Citizens Abroad (ACA). Some of those interviewed participated in an informal meeting in Geneva 12 November with the new US ambassador to Switzerland, Donald Beyer, where the banking problem was raised.
Beyer later in the day told WRS public radio in Geneva that some 9,000 Americans took advantage of an IRS amnesty for citizens overseas that ended 15 October. He suggested in the radio interview that the number of names UBS will turn over to the IRS is likely to be lower than the numbers – up to 50,000 – tossed about earlier in 2009 by international media.
