UBS is the undisputed heavyweight with external asset managers. But a far smaller rival has stolen a march on the Swiss bank by lifting a team of bankers, finews.com can report exclusively.
EAMs, or external asset manager, has grown substantially in importance for banks in recent years – in particular as a heavier regulatory burden weighs on small boutiques. Banks have responded by building EAM arms to cater to the niche in Switzerland, and UBS and Credit Suisse are among the biggest players.
Now, Liechtenstein's LGT is poaching a team of EAM bankers from UBS: Reto Buegler, Reto Buehler and Lukas Weder will all join UBS as senior relationship managers, finews.com learned. LGT confirmed the moves of all three intermediaries experts.
Setback For UBS
The royal family-owned Vaduz bank wants to expand its business with EAMs under Markus Werner (pictured above). While Buegler will work from Vaduz, Buehler and Weder will remain posted in Zurich.
For UBS, the triumvirate's departure is a considerable loss of expertise and relationships. Taken together, the three have nearly 25 years of experience working with intermediaries at UBS.
Buegler (pictured, left) led private label funds, which offers external managers funds and other products under their own brand, for six years.
Buehler (pictured, left) has been an EAM advisor at UBS for ten years, and previously worked in similar roles for Dresdner Bank as well as Banque International à Luxembourg, or BIL.
The last eight years, he has worked alongside Weber (pictured, left), who also catered to external managers as well as family offices in Switzerland and Europe.
The three worked under financial intermediaries head Stefano Veri at UBS, while Stephan Matti is responsible for the Swiss market.
Strong Principality
With LGT, they join a bank which under Markus Werner and Rolf Aklin have focused on supporting outside managers with MiFID II rules as well as their Swiss counterpart, Fidleg or FFSA.
The principality's bank is emerging as a winner in ongoing industry consolidation, thanks to the acquisition two years ago of ABN Amro's private bank in Asia and the Middle East, which vaulted it over the 180 billion francs in assets mark. Two years prior to that, LGT bought a 10 billion franc portfolio from HSBC's Swiss arm, but is now growing briskly on its own: the bank hoovered up 9.6 billion francs in net new money in the first six months of 2017.
