Star banker Boris Collardi was never fully accepted as a member of the club at Pictet, finews.com discovered when it looked into why it came to a parting of the ways between him and the venerable wealth manager. 

The scrappy, young, driven Boris Collardi with an impeccable network of the world’s wealthy and Pictet, the staid 216-year-old Genevan stronghold which had only allowed three outside partners in the last 40 years to join its exclusive club seemed like an odd couple right from the start.

On Wednesday, they broke up, though, in typically genteel Genevan style, the split was discreet and without fuss. Collardi will leave in two weeks, just as Pictet accepts the first woman, hedge fund manager Elif Aktuğ, into its partnership.

Slow Rift

The rift developed over months and came about for reasons including irreconcilable differences about the culture of private banking, in a surprising lack of due diligence on both parties’ part, and  a subtle shift in power under Renaud de Planta, according to five people familiar with the events.

They all declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak. A key moment was de Planta's elevation two years ago to senior managing partner, a «first among equals» role. Under de Planta, who has been a Pictet partner for 23 years, many Collardi initiatives to bolster the Swiss bank's wealth arm foundered, these people said.

Private Bank Of Last Report

De Planta's purview is asset management, not private banking. His view of Pictet is summarized by one banker who spoke to finews.com as «being only as much of a bank as is necessary,» meaning discretion, tradition, and security for clients. 

Pictet’s strength in doing so was on full display during the pandemic: the wealth manager is typically the private bank of last resort – a safety net of sorts if all else fails. 

De Planta frequently refers to the partnership as the «Pictet fortress» of more than two centuries for its clients. Sophisticated clients would typically pick banks such as Goldman Sachs over Pictet to do their more lucrative, risk-based business. 

Slow Modernization Steps 

Collardi was hired to revamp Pictet's wealth management in 2017, when the balance of power was still solidly with private bankers under senior managing partner Nicolas Pictet.

Three years before, under Jacques de Saussure, Pictet abandoned the «banquier privé» structure in favor of a société en commandite par actions (a corporate partnership) to manage its group holding – a concession that showed even the most conservative wealth manager in Switzerland was moving with the times.

Dynamic CEO Arrives

Who better to orchestrate the next modernization step for its business with the wealthy than a proven «growth» CEO who had made a success of the bold play to position Julius Baer as the largest independent private bank in Switzerland and a force to be reckoned with in Asia?

At just 43 when he eventually began at Pictet in 2018, Collardi had arrived. Immeasurable prestige in Geneva as well as abroad and ownership riches without public scrutiny beckoned. Collardi had been assured by Pictet's partners that they would throw their weight behind a modern private banking strategy.

Lack Of Internal Support

But in the reality of daily «club» meetings, Collardi was increasingly hamstrung, often by de Planta (pictured below), according to several of the people finews.com spoke to. In the meetings, where partners are required to reach an unanimous consensus before acting on a decision, Collardi failed to create a support base.

DePlanta 500

Another person close to Pictet denied this, a view which appears to be born out by a record first-half result from the firm: Collardi's more forceful push into Asia worked, as well as more prominence in Zurich, where he spearheaded a move into offices on the city's main thoroughfare – just opposite Julius Baer. 

Pictet's 223 billion Swiss franc ($244 billion) asset management arm is booming, as is its alternative investments business. Eventually, Collardi was also tasked with technology and operations, where Pictet has an advantage because of its ultra-modern infrastructure. 

Modernization Efforts Founder

Increasingly, Pictet's distaste for risks and culture of keeping the more lucrative elements of banking – leverage, products, advisory – to a minimum was at odds with Collardi’s background of boosting business by hiring and bringing in new clients.

This became crystal clear in Asia, one of Collardi’s focuses. Most of the region's wealthy dabble in leverage and are far more at ease with riskier products than clients in Western Europe. The fortress versus growth conflict played out when bankers poached from competitors such as Julius Baer weren't able to deliver fully on pledges to clients. 

«Fortress» As Strategy

As a stronghold, Pictet was ultimately more interested in maintaining a cosy status quo – more akin to a family office than an under-pressure wealth manager honing a pitch-perfect offering to grow. Rivals privately criticize this stance as a lack of strategy (this line of thinking ignores the fact that Pictet’s «fortress» is a strategy in itself).

A subtext of this cultural conflict was more personal -- Geneva’s banking aristocracy was slow to warm to Collardi. The Swiss-Italian native increasingly realized he would always be an outsider in a world where «banquiers don't even take off their ties in bed» as one source remarks sardonically, several people noted.

Residency Credibility

Collardi was surprised to learn when he arrived in Geneva that he was expected to live there, giving up his residency in rural and tax-friendly Schwyz, where he has long maintained a home.

The episode is emblematic of how both sides failed to conduct fairly basic due diligence on each other: Collardi appears to have been subtly nudged into moving to Geneva. 

Meanwhile, Pictet's discreet and reserved partners didn’t appreciate Collardi regularly hitting the  headlines over laundering of Venezuelan oil money during his stint at Julius Baer. Although no criminal charges were brought against Collardi and he escaped with a reprimand, Pictet was tainted by association

Invisible Man

By last March, when the pandemic broke out and grounded bankers from traveling, «Collardi all but disappeared,» one observer noted. «You knew he was still with Pictet, but his efforts were nearly invisible.»

finews.com reported how he was thwarted in a key derivatives offering late last year, for which Pictet had enticed Julius Baer's long-standing structured products trading boss Valentin Vonder Muehll to Geneva.

High-Profile Defections

Collardi, who poached more than 100 bankers, suffered a setback when Pamela Hsu Phua defected from Pictet, taking a team with her. Phua's role was to set up a range of services for wealthy clients and family offices, which would compete with that of other Swiss banks in Asia: Lombard loans, products, advisory services.

«This fundamentally runs counter to Pictet's philosophy,» one of the people said. Pictet does offer Lombard loans and advisory in Asia, but not to the same extent as its rivals in the region. VP Bank recently snapped up Phua as its head of Asia.

Inability To Evolve Strategy

Collardi's three-year sojourn in Geneva illustrates how Pictet, despite its success as a private bank, is steeped in an identity and traditions cultivated over more than 200 years. The cost to both sides is considerable. Collardi's call to dozens of bankers to join Pictet could turn out to be a siren one when they lose their key backer. The same applies to the clients who followed them to Pictet and won't be receiving the full range of services they were expecting.

As for Collardi, now 47, he appears ready to return to a faster-moving, more dynamic environment – there is no shortage of such roles in wealth management.