The Private Banking Summit 2007 is taking place in Zurich these days (4.-6. September). Once again the organizers managed to put together a list of distinguished speakers from top management of various private banking players (program). We provide you with a short summary of some of the take-aways of day 1 and a video interview with conference chairman Prof. Teodoro Cocca.

Take-aways:

  • The “One Bank Strategy” was probably the hottest topic of day 1. All the large players talked about the integration between private banking and investment banking and to a certain extent institutional asset management and retail banking.
  • Of course the shortage of private bankers (war for talent) was a topic that practically all the presenters picked-up on. Interestingly, they didn’t see investment bankers as a source to recruit new private bankers, because of cultural differences. The former are short term transaction focused while the latter are long term relationship focused.
  • As to the discussion on the topic “is bigger better?”, all the speakers converged to the consensus that there are opportunities for both, big and small. They use different business models and focus on different segments of private banking.
  • Finally, there seemed to be a little gap between the relatively aggressive growth strategies of large global players (organic and acquisition) and mid-sized players that focus on (profitable) niches.

In the webcast we asked Prof. Teodoro Cocca, Chairman of the Private Banking Summit 2007, about his impressions of the first conference day (don’t get distracted by the background noise - it’s at the end of day 1 and the team of the venue is preparing day 2):





Obviously these few bullet points and the short video do not reflect the richness of the day and the insights given to us by some of the speakers. We will integrate the content in a series of follow-up blogposts, such as on the topic “one bank strategy”. In the meantime let us conclude with our choice of the quote of the day by Dr. Pierre de Weck, Member of the Group Executive Committee of Deutsche Bank to the question “is bigger better?”:

Big is good if you are able to manage the disadvantages of being big


Conference speakers of day 1 included: Walter Thoma, Vontobel Group; Pierre de Weck, Deutsche Bank; Javier Arús, Banco Santander, Markus Gonseth, Bank Julius Bär; Sarah Owen-Jones, Coutts Bank von Erns; Serge Roben, Merrill Lynch Bank (Suisse); Edward Taylor, The Wall Street Journal Europe; Patrick du Saint, BNP Paribas (Suisse); Gerard Aquilina, Barclays International Private Bank; Mr Wiesendanger, Credit Suisse; Fidelis M. Goetz, Bank Sarasin; Teodoro Cocca, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz.

Popularity: 40% [?]