Indosuez Wealth Management said it will acquire an Italian private bank that is partly owned by the Agnelli family. The bank has a branch in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
Indosuez Wealth Management, a unit of Crédit Agricole, acquires two thirds of Banca Leonardo, a Milan-based private bank, the company said in a statement today. It reached an agreement with the owners of the Italian bank, one which being Exor, an investment firm controlled by the Agnelli family.
Indosuez Wealth Management intends to buy the rest of the bank later on, it added in the statement. Banca Leonardo was founded in 1999 and has branches in Lugano, Turin and Lecco.
UBS at the end of last year (report in German) bought the French business of the bank, which operated under the brand name Banque Leonardo France.
Swiss Business
Banca Leonardo harbored grand plans for its investment banking business in Switzerland, having acquired the corporate finance unit of Bank Sal. Oppenheim in 2011. Ronald Sauser, the head of the Swiss team, in 2015 moved together with his team to EY consultants in Zurich.
With Banca Leonardo, Indosuez acquires about 5.9 billion euros in client assets. Indosuez in Switzerland has branches in Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne and Lugano.
Expansion Strategy
Italy is the third-largest private-banking market in the euro zone, second only to Germany and France. Indosuez CEO Paul de Leusse expects the Italian wealth-management market to expand by an average 4 percent a year.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and the banks intend to complete the takeover in the first half of 2018.
Indosuez most recently expanded its business in Asia. It bought the private banking of Crédit Industriel et Commercial in Singapore and Hong Kong.
