The former head of Rothschild's Swiss-based trust business has turned up in Liechtenstein, where a niche player is hoping for a wealth management boost.
Stefan Liniger is taking over the wealth and trust business at Kaiser Partner, a Vaduz-based investment advisory, the company said on Thursday. Kaiser is owned and run by Fritz Kaiser, a well-known banker in the principality who is partly stepping away.
Most recently, Liniger ran Zurich-based private bank Rothschild & Co's trust arm from 2011 until last year; previously, he was a partner at white-glove law firm Baer & Karrer and head of wealth planning at Goldman Sachs in Zurich.
1MDB Slap
Rothschild offloaded the trust arm four months ago in a management buyout to Richard Martin, a senior executive at the unit, and to an unnamed investor following a regulatory rebuke for its dealings with 1MDB, as finews.com reported.
Liniger is taking a team of trust experts to Kaiser, including Elena Andrianova, who most recently ran Rothschild's Russian trust activities. The move is the second in short order for Kaiser, which late last year wrapped up the acquisition of Vontobel's business in Liechtenstein. Kaiser's managed assets swelled to $4 billion and its net profit doubled to $4.5 million as a result.
Vintage Sports Cars
The trust offensive comes as Kaiser's 63-year-old founder relinquishes the «executive» chairman role in favor of simply being chairman of the firm. It isn't clear who will replace Kaiser, but the hire of Liniger can be viewed through the prism of a generational handover.
Kaiser told finews.com that he is still fully engaged in the firm. Besides private banking and fiduciary activities, the wider Kaiser group is active in family office, real estate, wind energy, and digital solutions. Kaiser employs roughly 250 people in Vaduz, Zurich, Milan, Hamburg, and Gdansk, Poland.
Alongside his day job, Kaiser last year built his passion for vintage sports cars into a business. Classic Car Trust supports Kaiser on the international market for vintage automobiles and their collectors with various initiatives.
