The Swiss private bank benefited from the a year of uncertainty amid the pandemic as well as market turmoil, with its assets surging to a new record amid major inflows of new money.
The Genevan, partner-led firm's assets surged six percent to 609 billion Swiss francs ($680.7 billion) at the end of last year, Pictet said in an emailed statement. A flood of 24 billion in fresh money – slightly more from its asset management arm than its flagship private banking unit – underpinned the rise, as did healthy market performance last year, Pictet said in a brief summary.
«The strong inflows of new client assets are due in no small part to the excellent investment performance across our business units,» senior Pictet partner Renaud de Planta said. Pictet, which opened offices in Monaco, Shanghai, and New York in 2020, said it continued to invest both in technology as well as in people, where it hired a net 173 new employees.
Rebuke For Partner
Net profit rose by seven percent to 577 million francs, while revenue climbed by ten percent to 2.89 billion francs. Pictet, which is run by de Planta and fellow partners Rémy Best, Laurent Ramsey, Bertrand Demole, Marc Pictet, Sébastien Eisinger, and Boris Collardi didn't provide a more detailed results statement (nor is it required to).
The 126-year-old wealth manager made no mention of a written rebuke for Collardi by its home regulator, Finma, three weeks ago. The reprimand dates back to laundering Venezuelan money during Collardi's tenure at Julius Baer, which he ran from 2009 until 2017.
