Julius Baer has confirmed it is in discussions
with Bank of America (BofA) about Merrill Lynch’s international
wealth management business outside the United States.
The sale of BofA/Merrill Lynch’s global
private wealth management unit has reportedly attracted the
interest of Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and UBS in
recent weeks.
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PBI understands that RBC Wealth
Management is not interested in the acquisition. The Canadian
wealth manager had been mentioned as a possible bidder and bought
Coutts’ Latin American, Caribbean and African private banking
business in March.
Merrill Lynch’s non-US operations unit has
about $90bn assets under management and serves clients across
Europe Asia and South America.
People familiar with the matter suggest the
unit could fetch more than $3bn.
All of the banks involved, apart from Julius
Baer, have declined to comment on the matter.
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By GlobalData
Shifting focus from Asia?
Out of the rumoured bidders, Julius Baer has
been the most active recently in terms of international business
expansion.
In May 2011 Julius Baer bought a 30% stake in
Brazilian independent wealth manager GPS, while in 2012 it opened a
representative office in Tel Aviv and hired twenty people in
Switzerland to better cover the Middle East market.
In 2011 the Swiss bank acquired Macquarie
Private Wealth Asia, opened a representative office in Shanghai and
launched $100m China Fund.
Reservations from UBS and Credit
Suisse?
Both UBS and Credit Suisse have been trying to
contain costs in the past 24 months and have adopted a less
aggressive expansion strategy.
UBS latest international acquisition is dated
April 2010, when the Swiss bank re-entered the Brazilian market
following its acquisition of Brazilian brokerage firm Link
Investimento.
Credit Suisse latest purchase is more recent,
as the bank completed the buy out of HSBC’s private banking
business in Japan in June 2012.
Nevertheless Credit Suisse has also integrated
its subsidiary Clariden Leu in a bid to save around CHF200m ($218m)
annually and has streamlined its branch network in Italy with the
closure of 16 branches.
