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.
