The Swiss investment house wants to sharpen its profile with the wealthy in Eastern Europe – and is poaching a team of five private bankers from a foreign rival to do so, finews.com has learned.
Vontobel snapped up a team of five private bankers specialized in wealthy clients from Eastern Europe from Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), the bank confirmed to finews.com. The team, led by Eric Benischke, who ran the same business for BIL for the last seven years and was previously with Julius Baer, the team began at Vontobel this week.
The other bankers include Ivan Belga and Chris Delsman as client advisers, Vadim Lipanov as an investment adviser, and Adrian Schmidlin as an assistant. The team, which have worked together for years, reports to Rolando Zanotelli, who took over wealth management for Vontobel for the wider region in January.
More Russian Heft
The BIL team lends Vontobel more heft in banking with wealthy Russians, a business it first dipped into when it bought Notenstein La Roche's business in the same region three years ago. Vontobel took over the entire bank one year later (last year, La Roche's partners bolted right after bonus time).
Of Vontobel's total 57 billion Swiss francs ($63 billion) in assets, roughly 12 percent stem from emerging markets – including central and eastern Europe – and Asia. Its private bank, led by Georg Schubiger, recently poached from Credit Suisse in Italy as well.
