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The Vaduz-based lender, owned by the
principality's royal family, said last year it was buying from
HSBC $12.5 billion of private banking assets that the British
bank wanted to offload to reduce the size of its wealth
management arm.
HSBC's Swiss private bank has been at the center of a media
storm after client data and other documents were leaked last
month which suggested the unit might have helped wealthy clients
dodge taxes in a period up to 2007. HSBC has admitted past
compliance failures but has said the business has since been
overhauled.
LGT was one of the first major banks to be caught up in an
international clampdown on tax evasion, suffering a client
exodus in 2008 and 2009 after it featured in a U.S. Senate
report on tax evasion.
Since then the principality, wedged between Switzerland and
Austria, has taken steps to dispel its image as a tax haven and
reposition itself as a legitimate financial center and LGT has
seen positive net inflows of assets for the past five years.
LGT said on Monday its net profit rose last year to 165 million
Swiss francs ($169 million) from 139.2 million francs in 2013,
with revenue rising nearly 13 percent to 1.01 billion francs.
Gross assets under management rose by 20 percent last year to
128.8 billion francs. Valuation gains boosted the total by 7.1
billion francs while net asset inflows added another 7.1 billion
francs. The bank then took in another 7.3 billion francs of
inflows at the beginning of December from the private banking
portfolios acquired from HSBC's Swiss bank.
($1 = 0.9769 Swiss francs)
(Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Prateek Chatterjee, Greg
Mahlich)
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