The financial terms, and size of the client book, were not disclosed.

Vontobel is to acquire the client book from fellow Swiss firm IHAG Privatbank, which oversees SFr3 billion ($3.53 billion) of client money.

“Acquiring IHAG Privatbank’s client portfolio further strengthens our position across the DACH region,” Christel Rendu de Lint and Georg Schubiger, co-CEOs of Vontobel, said in a statement yesterday.

The transaction, for an undisclosed sum, is expected to have an immediate positive impact on Vontobel’s group net profit and will be financed from the firm’s existing capital.

Subject to customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2025 at the latest.

At the end of June this year, IHAG Privatebank had 77 members of staff, according to the bank’s website. 

IHAG Privatbank hasn’t given a statement on its website about the sale of the client book, such as the reasoning behind it. This publication has asked it about the transaction, and may update this story in due course.

In February 2022, IHAG Privatbank appointed Michael Gassmann as its new chief operating officer, replacing Manuel Bächi, who left to take on new opportunities after spending four years at the bank. 

Founded 75 years ago, IHAG Privatbank is owned by Gratian Anda, a descendant of industrialist and arms manufacturer Emil Georg Buehrle. The bank was established to support the financial activities of the different companies of Buehrle. IHFS Holding AG, which owns 100 per cent of the capital of Privatbank IHAG Zürich, is owned by Carol Franz-Bührle and family (20 per cent share) and Gratian Anda and family (80 per cent share).

In January 2021 IHAG Privatbank named former Falcon Private Bank chief executive Martin Keller as its CEO. 

There was controversy last year. In late March 2023, Daniel Walchli, who was a member of the executive board of Zurich’s IHAG Holding AG – which owns IHAG Privatbank – pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to fraud for helping an unnamed hedge fund manager and other US taxpayers hide $60 million in assets. Walchli, 55, was charged in 2021 along with two IHAG bankers, as well as Swiss financial firm Allied Finance Trust AG and two of its executives (source: Bloomberg, 31 March 2023.)