Dubai: JPMorgan (JPM) Private Bank wants to double its Middle Eastern business within the next four years, a move that would see assets under management grow annually between 15 per cent and 20 per cent, by expanding in oil-rich places like Qatar and Abu Dhabi, a senior executive told Zawya Dow Jones on Tuesday.
JPMorgan is among several international banks that have earmarked the Middle East as a major source of growth in the wealth management sphere.
Major players such as Barclays, Credit Suisse, Societe Generale and more recently Lombard Odier have operations here or have announced expansion plans in the Middle East, lured by stronger growth prospects compared to more mature western markets.
"Abu Dhabi and Qatar have huge opportunities because there are pools of wealth that are concentrated in a few large hands and that is exactly what JPMorgan target clients are like. We would like to build out some of the newer markets that will represent future expansion around an important country like Saudi Arabia," said Paolo Moscovici, head of JPMorgan Private Bank in the Middle East, in an interview at the company's Dubai office.
The US banking giant adopts a different approach from most of its competitors in that it caters to the so-called ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI), clients whose wealth typically exceeds $30 million (Dh110.17 million).
"We are exclusively focused on the top end: 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the ultra-high-net-worth private clients that we serve have made their fortunes through building and developing privately-held companies which form the backbone of the economies of the Middle East," said Moscovici. U
ltra-HNWIs saw their wealth rebounding 21.5 per cent in 2009 after losing 24 per cent in 2008, according to the Capgemini-Merill Lynch 2010 World Wealth Report. At the end of 2009, UHNWI accounted for 35.5 per cent of the global HNWI wealth.
