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LATEST ARTICLES
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The bank’s decision to sell a large minority stake in Credit Suisse’s former China JV to BSAM, a Beijing-based fund it has known for decades, is a setback for Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The US firm is still committed to expanding in China’s troubled market.
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John Mathews, head of UHNW Americas for UBS in New York, tells Euromoney why the US’s private banking model is so successful, why the Swiss firm is really in the life counselling business, and explains why it has targeted US ultra-high net worth clients.
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After a decade of restructuring, EFG International ramped up hiring last year – above all from Credit Suisse. Chief executive Giorgio Pradelli talks about the firm’s scope to lead a wave of Swiss-bank consolidation, while doubling down on new wealth from the Middle East and Asia.
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Credit Suisse’s domestic bank was arguably the failed group’s best and strongest division. One year after the rescue, UBS is not the only one trying to feast on its domestic wealth-management and corporate-banking leftovers. Other Swiss and international players also hope to benefit from the longer-term fallout in Switzerland. Will the rush to pick up the remnants of the fallen champion pay off?
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The UBS chief investment office’s sustainable and impact investing strategist wants to avoid measurement for the sake of measurement, but responding to client demand for more data while ensuring its readability remains a challenge.
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The Sino-Swiss corridor, set up to encourage Chinese firms to sell global depositary receipts to international investors in the European state, took off fast in 2022. But a host of challenges, from Chinese regulatory concerns to an apparent lack of global interest, has stalled its progress.
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Record regional bank profits, plus strong capital ratios in Western Europe, have fuelled hope for more bank acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The uncertain effect of recent court rulings on Swiss franc mortgages, however, is a big obstacle to deals in Poland.
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A $3.5 billion deal attracts $36 billion of demand, answering the question of whether Swiss banks can return to this market after Credit Suisse's collapse.
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UBS will face pressure to spin off Credit Suisse’s Swiss bank and may yet lose more private-banking assets. Coping with this will make managing down illiquid and hard-to-value markets positions look easy.
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With the advent of its strategic alliance with Japan’s Mizuho Financial, Lombard Odier now has wealth management tie-ups in seven Asia countries, with the promise of more to come.
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As soon as the ink was dry on the agreement to take over Credit Suisse, UBS chairman Colm Kelleher rushed to bring ex-CEO Sergio Ermotti back to run the bank and the deal. Execution risk is off the charts, and the nerves of shareholders, employees and taxpayers are jangling.
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Pure-play Swiss private bank Julius Baer has had to reconfigure its business model for the 2020s. Chief executive Philipp Rickenbacher talks to Euromoney about why scale and nurturing talent are key to the long-term success of a firm that does just one thing and one thing well: serving wealthy private clients.
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The Credit Suisse deal may have merely accelerated Hamers’ anticipated departure.
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The failure of venture capital’s favourite bank is bad news for a sector reliant on new injections of cheap capital to sustain loss-making growth.
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What will UBS’s post-merger sustainable finance strategy look like?
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First Abu Dhabi Bank’s recent interest in a bid for Standard Chartered and an ill-fated investment in Credit Suisse by Saudi National Bank have put the spotlight on Middle East banks as potential acquirers of international firms.
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It has been over a decade and a half since a Chinese financial institution bought or invested in a Western counterpart. Beijing sees the West’s banking system as incomprehensibly chaotic and messy, and its own – albeit flawed – as a bastion of stability.
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Hong Kong conference moves along. Nothing to see here.
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Will the fall of Credit Suisse be a seismic moment for private banking? Probably not – the reality is that wealthy clients need their financial advisers too much. Wealth is flighty for sure, but it usually alights nearby at a more stable lender.
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UBS’s integration of Credit Suisse will be a long and uncertain process, but keeping the latter’s Swiss universal bank may mean the deal eventually comes good.
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Bankers have been at pains to stress how different the world is today from the dark days of 2008: higher capital; more liquidity; lower credit risk and all that. But while individual banks may be safer than they were, collectively they arguably now face a worse existential crisis. Societies face awkward questions about how they value the utility of the banking sector – and how they should pay for it.
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UBS shareholders might find plenty not to like in what seems at first glance like a great deal. The bank is making itself more complex at a time when creditors and investors put a premium on simplicity and focus.
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Michael Klein can’t be expected to ‘devote significant time and attention’ to the unlikely prospect that UBS will allow a CS First Boston spin-off without being paid. Greensill-style invoices for Klein’s theoretical future services could be the answer.
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Credit Suisse came out of the global financial crisis in better shape than many peers. But fragility was never far away – in the years that followed its fortunes would swing back and forth, sometimes violently. Here is the bank’s route to 2023, explained through Euromoney’s own coverage.
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Unfortunately, while the SNB can provide ample liquidity that Credit Suisse doesn’t really need, it cannot provide the trust and credibility it sorely lacks.
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Droit helps traders decide in milliseconds if deals comply with the ever-changing rules and aims to do the same for wealth managers.
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While the bank plans to spin off its troubled investment bank, the new worry is whether and how soon it can repair the wealth management business.
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AT1s rallied on news that UBS will redeem a key deal in January. But with refinancing costs higher than coupon re-sets, the pressure now passes to other big banks.
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Shareholders will be keenly watching two market levels for Credit Suisse shares in the weeks ahead: the theoretical ex-rights price and the subscription price for the capital increase that is under way.
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Credit Suisse directors may sigh with relief that shareholders have approved the latest capital raise, but they are already guiding to yet another big loss.
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After 12 years of near continuous restructuring and capital raising at Credit Suisse, the longest-serving chief financial officer of any G-Sib bank offers a few parting lessons.
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The market is awash with speculation over what Credit Suisse might do in its latest strategic reset, and what the future is for its perennially underperforming investment bank. But as talk mounts of radical cuts to come in that division, the real challenge lies elsewhere.
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A new chairman and chief executive at the Swiss bank once again struggle with how to build an investment bank for tomorrow from one that is floundering badly today.
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Raffael Gasser is a hybrid: part Zurich wealth manager, part Silicon Valley disruptor. He was tasked with crunching data to serve ‘classic’ PB customers who sit just below the ultra-wealthy segment and are often, curiously, overlooked. Here is how he got on.
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Private companies are doing everything they can to avoid down rounds, raising new equity at lower valuations than past deals, but can’t hold the line for much longer.
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The Swiss bank is still paying for its misdeeds, but this might be a taste of what’s to come for others.
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Credit Suisse is making heavy work of meeting its obligations under a 2017 RMBS settlement with the US Department of Justice. If it wants to make real progress, it will have to bite the bullet soon.
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Trading update does little to answer concerns around underlying performance and a slowdown in wealth management.
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Brought in to help clean up Credit Suisse, the high-profile Portuguese banker has been forced to quit to preserve what is left of its reputation.
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It took all of six days of the new year before the tone was set: XP Inc’s announcement of its acquisition of Banco Modal. The deal will need regulatory approval, but is being warmly endorsed by the target’s management and its minority shareholder, Credit Suisse.
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The Swiss firm’s decision to sell specialist Zurich-based wealth manager Wergen & Partner is the latest in a series of M&A deals. Expect more activity as private banks expand into new markets, or exit non-core markets to focus resources and invest in technology.
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Ralph Hamers is quietly imposing his vision on UBS, axing senior titles to simplify the structure and eyeing a new US digital bank for affluent customers.
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Credit Suisse’s hopes for 2021 were dashed by March, thanks to Greensill’s collapse and Archegos’s implosion. It really needs 2022 to go well.
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António Horta-Osório shifts more capital away from investment banking and into wealth management, while the executive team sells his risk management overhaul as a growth story.
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Credit Suisse’s chief sustainability officer is no ESG ideologue. She is at heart a hard-nosed investment banker who sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to guide clients to a more sustainable future.
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As conventional banks, asset managers and regulators embrace crypto, the institution warns this large and volatile asset class poses new risks to the world financial system.
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Adewale Ogunleye was rich and already retired from American Football when he learned what a basis point was. He’s now head of a new UBS wealth segment called Athletes & Entertainers that helps sports icons and singers plan their financial future.
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David Wildermuth, the new chief risk officer at Credit Suisse, may have much of the heavy lifting done by the time he arrives at his desk in Zurich.
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The Swiss bank claims a resilient performance lies beneath the meagre returns after de-risking post-Archegos and Greensill, but big questions remain.
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More focus on keeping a client happy than keeping the bank solvent; a risk management department that wasn’t tough enough and enabled bad practice; a willful reduction in margin; and two co-heads who each believed the other ran the relevant business. The report into Credit Suisse’s Archegos debacle makes grim reading.
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We are at the peak of the hype cycle for central bank digital currencies, now being touted as one of the most fundamental innovations in the history of central banking. It is time for central banks and governments to be honest with unenthused populations. CBDC can’t deliver all the many promised improvements. As we come to design choices, there will be trade-offs. We might get improved payments but less credit. We could see greater financial inclusion but will lose privacy. Are the few benefits really worth the risk of disrupting the financial system?
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With Greensill and Archegos, António Horta-Osório has more on his plate than a medieval King. But Credit Suisse’s new chair could do something that would placate doubters and please investors: pivot firmly to Asia.
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Raising capital may have been painful, but it is the sensible thing to do. There were bigger surprises when the bank announced first-quarter results.
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António Horta-Osório makes no apology for the unbridled optimism that has defined his 10 years running Lloyds Banking Group. Critics say he leaves it over-exposed to Brexit and dwindling interest margins. But, as he prepares to move to Switzerland to become chairman of Credit Suisse, Horta-Osório tells Euromoney that Lloyds’ greatest days could still be ahead of it.
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UBS has applied to buy out two minority investors in its China joint venture, boosting its stake in Beijing-based UBS Securities to 67%. The bank’s strong and long-standing relationship with the owner of the other 33%, a division of Beijing local government, is a timely reminder that there is no one right model for success in China.
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Rob Karofsky will become sole president of the investment bank at UBS, ending his ‘odd couple’ partnership with co-president Piero Novelli.
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UBS’s wealth management team had another stellar year despite the Covid crisis – and once again the Swiss lender takes the top spot in Euromoney’s private banking survey.
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It’s easier to reach your destination if you know where you’re going.
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Despite Covid, it was a good year for UBS and its outgoing chief executive Sergio Ermotti. Now it’s time for his successor Ralph Hamers to show his hand.
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A new Swiss-Singaporean enterprise styles itself as the world’s first digital asset bank. It is regulated, resembles the structure of a mainstream bank and has some high-visibility advisers and investors, among them Peter Wuffli. Will it work?
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The former UBS private banking chief leaves an impressive legacy across the wealth management industry.
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New CEO Thomas Gottstein will change neither the strategy nor the structure at Credit Suisse, but rather focus on growth in every division.
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The ouster of Tidjane Thiam has caused more shock outside Switzerland than within, where the insiders who needed him to fix Credit Suisse have been quite ruthless in expelling him now the job is done.
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UBS Global Wealth Management is the world’s best wealth manager. It is an accolade the firm has enjoyed for 13 of the 17 years of Euromoney’s annual survey. But its financial performance does not match its scale. A new partnership at the top of the firm has a plan to integrate business lines and streamline processes.
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There were many things declared at Davos this year that would lead us to believe that sustainability is now embedded in every decision a bank or investment manager makes. Here are some great examples that show 2020 is starting on a positive track.
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Lender lures China Merchants Bank’s head of private banking to oversee the Swiss bank’s onshore wealth management ops.
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‘Business as usual’ has been tough for the Swiss bank to achieve over the last 12 months. Management faces a challenge to show the bank will not just survive but thrive.
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Being the world’s leading wealth manager presents challenges in this market environment. UBS is coping relatively well.
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UBS’s country head refuses to comment on whether Banco do Brasil has been given a ‘call option on the bank’s Brazilian IB business’.
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If you missed the US train, catch the one in China.
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A UBS economist made an innocuous comment about swine flu in China, and five days later a belief among Chinese speakers that he used a racist term has led to him being suspended, UBS apologizing and it disappearing from a key Chinese bond mandate. Now what?
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As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our April capital markets focus.
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Little confidence profit warning relates to one-off; cost cuts not enough to compensate.
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Mark Branson, chief executive officer of Swiss financial regulator Finma, talks to Euromoney about how tax transparency has changed the trajectory of private banking and how far regulation can go in curtailing misconduct.
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Jürg Zeltner, former chief executive of UBS Wealth Management, explains how the chief investment office was born out of chaos. Its introduction shifted not just UBS but the whole private banking industry to a model of professionalism.
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Bullish chief executive is still struggling to convince the markets that his plan will work in the long term
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The bank is delivering a strategy for the post-crisis world. So why aren’t investors giving it more credit?
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Founders claim existing meat-production business model at risk from stranded assets as interest in meat-free diet grows.
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While negative rates fundamentally undermine its domestic lenders, the Alpine nation’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies also coincides problematically with threats to its private banks.
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Two of the world’s most advanced cryptocurrency markets agree to exchange notes on blockchain regulation.
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Larger family offices are taking on the private equity firms as they focus on investing directly.
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Jon Macaskill profiles the two new co-heads of investment banking at UBS.
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As the signs become ever more apparent that CEO Thiam has revived Credit Suisse, Euromoney’s banker of the year shares the inside stories of a revolution.
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It took an outsider to turn around Credit Suisse, to force executives and shareholders to accept that they had been following a false dream of a trading-dominated business that could somehow avoid blow-ups and produce acceptable returns.
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An investment of around $10 billion in shares of a reinsurance firm does not seem like an obvious move for a technology conglomerate like SoftBank, but its founder Masayoshi Son relishes any opportunity to surprise the markets.
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Outsiders struggling to make sense of the investing tactics of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son can take some comfort: his own directors often seem just as puzzled.
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The luxury-asset investment platform is to raise funds by selling tokens that mirror participation certificates under Swiss law, with full KYC and AML checks on buyers.
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Credit Suisse leads banks with coalition for investments; forest resilience bond slated for next year.
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Monetary policy has delivered global growth and booming asset prices. During the financial crisis and its aftermath, central bankers demonstrated admirable pragmatic radicalism. But monetary policy is not a cure-all, and another global downturn will present an even tougher test for policymakers.
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Earnings were positive in 2017, but it's a shame about the share price
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Tidjane Thiam needs to prove that the new-look Credit Suisse can thrive and not just survive - and he might just do it
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Jürg Zeltner inspired UBS to regain its position as the world’s best private bank, and his departure has shocked many in the industry – what will he do next?
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Marco Abele, former head of digital for private banking at Credit Suisse, plans to tokenize billionaires’ luxury assets so millionaires can enjoy them too.
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Marisa Drew has gone from being one of Credit Suisse’s most senior investment bankers to overseeing the Swiss group’s new global impact finance and advisory division, reporting directly to group chief executive Tidjane Thiam. Clients are curious. Should competitors take note?
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In wealth management circles, the shock isn’t so much that Collardi has moved – rather, it’s the rival he has moved to.
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A focus on clients with a strong connection to Switzerland allows the bank to forge particularly close relationships and deliver a quality service.
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Swift’s global payments innovation (gpi) has received a strong endorsement from multinational Swiss corporates, which have called for greater take up by the banks to solve many of their cash management issues.
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Best bank in the Middle East Emirates NBD Best investment bank in the Middle East HSBC Best digital bank in the Middle East Emirates NBD Best bank for financing in the Middle East Citi Best bank for advisory in the Middle East Barclays Best bank for markets in the Middle East National Bank of Abu Dhabi Best bank for transaction services in the Middle East Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Best bank for wealth management in the Middle East Audi Private Bank Best bank for CSR in the Middle East Arab African International Bank Best bank for SMEs Bank of Alexandria Best bank transformation Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait Outstanding contribution to financial services Hisham Ezz Al Arab . Country Awards for Excellence 2016: Middle East Awards for Excellence Middle East press release
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Private banking is a business that more and more banks want to be in. It looks easy; go to Geneva and buy one of the banks already operating there. American Express did that, and had the foresight to ensure that the old owner, Edmond Safra, would not compete directly for five years. The five years are up next month, and Safra has a score to settle.
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A private banker is a friend, confidant and counsellor to an often idiosyncratic client. It's an intimate relationship, and a lucrative one. The Swiss still lead the field.
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