Julius Baer, the Swiss bank which considers Asia its second home market, has poached a team of eight from rival Sarasin WealthBriefingAsia has learned.

Julius Baer, the Swiss bank which considers Asia its second home market, has poached a team of eight from rival Sarasin according to internal memos seen by WealthBriefingAsia, coming as one of the largest mass defections in many months.

(WealthBriefingAsia is sister publication to this website).

All eight new members are women, and most were also colleagues prior to their stint at Sarasin at Switzerland's UBS. The move comes shortly after Julius Baer failed in a bid to purchase a majority stake in Sarasin, which was eventually bought by Swiss-Brazilian player Safra. 

Elina So joined Julius Baer this week as senior client partner covering the Greater China markets, according to the first memo sent on 3 January. She reports directly to Asia chief executive, Thomas Meier, who signed the memo. So was previously vice chairman of the Greater China team at Bank Sarasin since 2008, and before that was the Hong Kong country team head at UBS Wealth Management, for over a decade.

So brings seven colleagues, as follows:

Jenny Wong joins Julius Baer as assistant reporting to So. She was previously an assistant vice president at Bank Sarasin and senior client advisor assistant at UBS for over a decade.

Candy Lam joins as senior relationship manager and reports to So. Lam was a relationship manager at Sarasin. She has held previous roles as an investment consultant at UBS, Coutts and DBS Bank.  

Reporting to Lam is Vera Shau, who joins as an assistant. She was a client advisory assistant at Sarasin, and like the others, previously worked at UBS and Credit Suisse as an assistant relationship manager.

In a separate internal memo circulated the following day, the bank announced four more appointments.

Carol Yau joins as a senior relationship manager reporting to So. Yau was an executive director/relationship manager at Bank Sarasin since 2011.  Prior to that, Yau was an associate partner at Macquarie Private Wealth and director/team head at UBS.

Vicki Li joins as an assistant and reports to Yau. Li also joined Sarasin in 2011 and previously worked at UBS, National Australia Bank and HSBC.

Camille Suen joins as relationship manager and reports to So. She was a director at Sarasin in her previous role, and a relationship manager at JP Morgan Private Bank and HSBC Private Bank.  

Kary Ho joins as assistant and reports to Suen. Ho was a client advisory assistant at Sarasin, and before that was a senior sales officer at BNP Paribas Fortis.

The en masse defection is symptomatic of how fierce the battle for talent is in Asia, where top bankers with books of business are hard to come by. One of the largest-scale mass poaching exercises to have been carried out in Asia was in 2009 when Banca della Svizzera Italiana lured between 70 and 90 private banking staff from the UK's RBS Coutts Asia division. 

Sarasin has gone some way towards plugging the gap. Last month it announced it had rejigged senior staff internally. Febby Avianto was promoted to the newly-created position of vice chair of client advisory, Southeast Asia. He joined Sarasin from UBS in 2009. Karen Leung was named vice chair of client advisory in Asia. She joined Sarasin in 2007 from Credit Suisse. Polly Lam was promoted to managing director and the newly-created role of head of China. Lam joined Sarasin in May 2009.

Industry sources say the move could be partly explained by Sarasin's recent sale from Dutch lender Rabobank to Brazilian-Swiss Safra. "Sarasin bankers may be leaving as they no longer have Rabobank's triple A rating, and a lot of bankers trade on the back of this," said one industry source.

Others point out that integrating the new team will not be without its challenges. In October the bank announced a strategic partnership with Macquarie, which saw the Australian lender's private wealth teams in Asia transfer to Julius Baer. Trying to create an equilibrium between the new Sarasin team, the new Macquarie staff, the incoming Safra management and the old guard, will by no means be easy, suggest sources.