The private banking firm has named the head of a newly-created sub-region as part of a restructure of its business lines.

Julius Baer, the Switzerland-listed private bank, announced today it has appointed Gerassimos Spyridakis as head of a newly created sub-region of Africa & Eastern Mediterranean, taking effect from the start of 2016 when he joins the bank.

As of the same date, Daniel Ph. Savary, current sub-region head for Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East & Africa, will fully focus on leading the Middle Eastern markets and become deputy of Rémy A. Bersier, region head and member of the executive board, the bank said in a statement.

Previously, Spyridakis has held various senior management positions at Citi Private Bank, including the roles of global head of Greece & Cyprus, Israel, Monaco and Africa.

“In the past four years, Julius Baer’s markets in the sub-region EMMEA have enjoyed dynamic growth and the overall business volume has strongly increased. In order to be able to focus even more on the different market areas and fully capture their opportunities, Africa & Eastern Mediterranean as well as the Middle East will become separate Sub-Regions as of 1 January 2016,” it said.

Among other recent hires by Julius Baer around the world, in early September it hired Citi Private Bank's Steven Lawrence as team head and senior relationship manager for the Philippine market. Lawrence joined from his position as senior private banker within Citi Private Bank's mega wealth team in Singapore.

In the UK, Julius Baer hired UBS's Loughlin Magowan as senior investment advisor in August. Magowan joined the London team from his previous position as senior investment advisor within UBS's wealth management arm. He joined UBS over 13 years ago.

Recent acquisition
In September, as previously reported here, Julius Baer completed the transfer of Merrill Lynch’s International Wealth Management business in India. Back in August 2012, Zurich-headquartered Julius Baer acquired Merrill Lynch’s international wealth management business outside the US.

Julius Baer said the volume of the asset transfer in India corresponds to more than SFr6 billion ($6.2 billion), bringing the overall client assets transferred as part of the transaction to the lower end of the target range of SFr57 billion to SFr72 billion. The latest step means the IWM integration, which began in February 2013, is now formally complete following the successful transfer of all 18 local businesses across several regions.