Julius Baer aims to manage as much as $100 billion in Asia by the end of the decade. Chief Executive Boris Collardi doesn’t see a need for takeovers as organic growth in the region is brisk.
The coming five-year period will finally make Julius Baer an Asian bank. The Zurich-based firm expects to generate a third of its business in the region, according to its CEO, Boris Collardi, 43, who granted «Bloomberg» an interview in the run-up to this weekend’s Formula One motor-sports event in Singapore.
Julius Baer currently makes about a 20 to 25 percent of its business in Asia and recorded the best-ever half-year result in the first six months of the year, said Collardi.
Hiring Spree Pays Off
Net new money in the region helped the bank increase assets under management by 6 percent from the end of 2016. The cost-income ratio in Asia is in the high 70s, which Collardi proclaimed that it didn’t bother him much as revenue momentum remained most important.
Julius Baer at the end of last year was Asia’s fifth-largest private bank, with 380 relationship managers under contract and more than $82 billion in assets under management. The bank added more than a hundred bankers last year, a hiring spree that had paid off in a «very big way,» according to Collardi. Julius Baer’s Asian assets under management are on track to reach $100 billion by 2020, he told «Bloomberg».
Organic Growth Does the Trick
Organic growth is so swift that the bank will do without acquisitions in the region: «We are doing great. We don’t need acquisitions,» Collardi said.
