|
 With 269 billion Swiss francs ($280.4 billion) of invested assets,
UBS ranks as the biggest wealth manager in Asia-Pacific. Last year,
it attracted nearly 27 billion Swiss francs of net new assets in
Asia, confirming it as the fastest-growing region for a wealth
management business in which it is the global leader.
"Here we need to grow two to three times the Asia growth story. It's
15 percent and above that we want to grow," Juerg Zeltner, Wealth
Management CEO at UBS, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
The main driver of growth in Asia was undoubtedly Chinese wealth,
with China now representing UBS' biggest private banking market
outside its home of Switzerland and the United States, Zeltner, the
Swiss executive said.
"China is clearly our number one opportunity. China is already our
largest wealth management market (excluding Switzerland and the
United States). It's bigger than Germany," said Zeltner, who spends
30 percent of his time in Asia.
Last month, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, putting renewed emphasis on
wealth management after shrinking the investment banking business,
said he expected Asia to represent 30 percent of UBS's global
invested assets within a decade.
UBS is betting on a strategy that allows wealthy clients to have
their assets managed out of offshore centers such as Hong Kong and
Singapore but also at home in China, where the bank has been
operating an onshore wealth management business since 2004.
This contrast with the approach of many international rivals, who
prefer to cater for wealthy Chinese clients from offshore centers
only.
[to top of second column] |
"If you look at global wealth, around 70 percent is today onshore,"
said Zeltner.
"In the long-term, it's pretty clear that with all the ongoing
changes, people will regain more confidence in the (Chinese)
government and people will want their assets close to home and I
want to be able to access those assets," he said.
Confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg, the UBS executive said he
had put the bank's Australian wealth division under review, and was
exploring all options, including a possible sale.
"The (Australian) market is dominated by local banks. It is very
competitive environment and of course we look at our options in such
an environment," Zeltner said.
($1 = 0.9592 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Lisa Jucca; Editing by Keith Weir)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
