News Analysis: Sarasin wins the battle for new money
Sarasin appears to be one of the biggest Swiss beneficiaries of money flows into its private bank during the credit crunch as the release of its annual results today testify.
Net new money brought in by the Basel-based wealth manager actually accelerated in the second half of last year from the first half, despite the wealthy dumping debt as fast as they could after the Lehman Brothers collapse in October and feeling a lot poorer ever since.
Sarasin reported SFr7.3bn flowing into the bank in the second half, compared with SFr7.2bn in the first half. The overall figure for last year is also up 30% on the 2007 level – a year when the wealthy were making record levels of money.
The second half new money figure is even more impressive given that the first half number was inflated by the transfer of assets by AIG Private Bank into Bank Zweiplus, a Bank Sarasin subsidiary.
The continuing commitment to hire is underpinning the rise, with Sarasin recruiting 122 relationship managers – pretty much one new recruit every three days – during 2008.
Sarasin position looks even rosier when compared with the inflows being reported by its competitors.
Earlier this week EFG International said it brought in SFr18.2bn of new money last year – but most of this was vacuumed up in the first half, with less than SFr5bn coming in during the second part of the year.
Much bigger competitors like Credit Suisse saw deleveraging effects slow inflows to just SFr2bn in the last quarter of last year.
And then there was the SFr54bn outflow from UBS in the last quarter of 2008 – with presumably Sarasin being a big beneficiary of this fleeing money.
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
reddit
StumbleUpon