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The integration of private banks and wealth managers is a tough challenge and others before Vontobel have struggled to make such acquisitions a success. One spectacular case was when UBS bought the German family office Sauerborn Trust in 2004, a company that was never integrated.

It fell upon Boris Collardi and Julius Baer to make the asset deal the preferred form of acquisition in Switzerland. Julius Baer bought the global wealth management of Merrill Lynch, but the private bank only paid for client assets that were actually booked on its platform.

Changing One's Bank Is a Big Step

Union Bancaire Privée in 2014 copied the example set by Julius Baer when it bought Coutts private bank. Both Julius Baer and Union Bancaire Privée never wanted to integrate the new businesses, they simply intended to boost the geographic reach of their respective companies. In principal, this was also what Vontobel had in mind when it acquired Notenstein La Roche’s 13 branches across Switzerland.

But even the successful takeovers are proof of clients’ unwillingness to embrace a new bank easily. Julius Baer and UBP retained less than 70 percent of the client assets of the businesses they had bought.

If these two examples can be taken as a measure of success, Vontobel would have to retain about 11 billion francs of Notenstein’s assets. But the bank paid for more than those 11 billion.