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Julius Baer's boss is leaving the Swiss private bank to become a partner at Pictet. In an analysis, finews.com draws the curtain back on the allure of Geneva's secretive giant for Boris Collardi.

In Zurich, Boris Collardi led an 11-man team overseeing 393 billion Swiss francs in client assets. In Geneva, Collardi will jointly be responsible for 210 billion francs for Pictet together with another bank partner, Remy Best.

A step down? Hardly. Pictet is the gold standard of Swiss banking: a 212-year-old brand which is run discreetly by partnership of at least six and not more than nine men (unlike rivals Lombard Odier or Mirabaud, Pictet has never had a female partner).

Collardi told staff at Julius Baer that he hoped to have more time for his personal life and family after giving up the CEO job and joining Pictet. The banker lives in tax-friendly canton Schwyz, but grew up in Nyon, a vineyard town between Geneva and Lausanne.

Riches and Prestige

But the move isn't simply shifting gears: the 43-year-old banker has to buy equity in Pictet, and will become one of seven partners. For Pictet, landing the ex-CEO is a coup, but equally, the private partnership offers riches and prestige far beyond what Julius Baer, Credit Suisse or UBS could ever offer.

«The partnership» decides unanimously in what it calls the «salon» setup, or not at all – meaning the pace of decision-making can be glacial. Partners buy equity in the firm when they join, which they can also inherit through family ties.

Because market value would be prohibitively expensive for a bank which had a profit of 422 million francs last year, stakes are bought and returned at book value – still in the tens or hundreds of millions of francs, depending on the size.

Banking Untouchables

Pictet has a lending facility to ease the one-time financial hit, and the loan is paid off over a period of many years when partners draw their profits. The mechanism is meant to foster the long-term thinking that Pictet says is the key to its success.

But Pictet doesn't enjoy talking about money, preferring to refer to intellectual or emotional qualities. «A new partner has to be someone you would be happy to sit down to a meal with,» ex-senior partner Jacques de Saussure told an academic journal.