Zurich: Julius Baer Group Ltd. said net new money from clients amounted to less than 3 per cent of managed assets in the first four months of the year, missing its target.
Clients in eastern Europe and Latin American showed “slow momentum,” while customers in Asia reduced borrowings and wealthy French and Italians repatriated money for tax declarations, the Zurich-based company said in a statement on Thursday.
Julius Baer said it can still reach its full-year target of a 4 per cent to 6 per cent increase in net new money.
The bank growing by making acquisitions to compensate for lacklustre organic growth, as it chases the growth of wealth managers several times its size such as UBS Group AG. The company paid $547 million (Dh2 billion) to resolve a US tax probe in February, erasing most of last year’s profit, and has said it needs to invest several hundred million dollars to upgrade its information-technology platform.
Client assets under management increased to 305 billion Swiss francs ($309 billion) in the first four months of the year, from 300 billion francs at the end of December, according to the statement. The increase includes about 9 billion francs at Kairos Investment Management SpA after Julius Baer increased its stake in the Italian asset manager to 80 per cent in April.
