Wealth-industry developments in Asia, the U.K., Canada and the Middle East. The Bank of Communications (BoCom), a Chinese government-owned institution in which HSBC has a stake, has started private-banking operations in Shanghai.

The new unit is meant to help the 100-year-old bank provide more services to, and presumably make more money from, it's biggest retail clients.

Xu Hao, deputy director of BoComm's new private-banking center, says that "% of BoCom's biggest retail clients "contributed three quarters of its total retail-banking business."

Major centers

BoCom is aiming its private-banking services at clients worth at least $2 million.

Last year Boston Consulting Group predicted that privately held assets in China will increase a rate of 17.4% a year through 2012 -- a figure that easily outpaces the global average of 5.6%.

Meanwhile Capgemini says that China accounted for more than a quarters of the Asia-Pacific's ultra-high-net-worth population in 2007. By "ultra high net worth" Capgemini means those with the equivalent, at least, of $30 million.

BoComm also has plans to provide wealth-management services in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Outreach 

Sydney, Australia-based Macquarie plans to open a new office in Singapore with a view to breaking into the Asian wealth-management market.

At present, Macquarie only provides private-banking services in Australia.

"Asia has one of the largest populations of high net worth individuals and this is growing at an (annual) rate of 10.1%," Macquarie says a press release.

Joseph Poon, formerly head of private banking for JP Morgan Chase's south Asian region, will lead Macquarie's Asian.

Airstrip One

The OK that SunGard recently got from British regulators to provide trading and connectivity services to corporate treasurers and asset managers in the U.K. means it can trade and conduct brokerage business across Europe. This gives Transaction Network (STN) the ability to work across a bigger swath of the "international trade lifecycle," according to the parent company.

"Globalization is becoming a key component to the strategies of many financial services firms," says Bob Ward, COO of SunGard's STN unit. "In the U.S. and internationally, STN solutions help institutional investors better manage trade execution and processing requirements, while helping to increase productivity, reduce processing costs and minimize operational risk."

SunGard says STN Securities and its STN Money Markets portal are the first of STN's trading and connectivity solutions to be introduced throughout Europe.

STN Securities connects asset managers to a global array of liquidity providers through a single platform. It supports the industry standard FIX protocol, as well as other message types, including S.W.I.F.T. and proprietary message formats.

STN's Money Markets portal provides multinational corporate treasurers with a central platform to diversify their short-term investments and to help mitigate currency risk while providing single-connection access to 240 multi-currency money funds.

SunGard STN has built a data center in the U.K. to support its European business.

A closer look

Mississauga, Canada-based Counsel Wealth Management (CWM) has selected Ibbotson Associates portfolio-modeling services, portfolio-risk evaluations at the asset-class level, and asset-class-return estimates.

"As a comprehensive portfolio service provider, [CWM] has always emphasized objective independence as a cornerstone in our portfolio manager selection and monitoring processes," says Sam Febbraro, president and CEO of CWM. "Working with Ibbotson will further entrench this value proposition."

"Simultaneously, through this relationship, we will be enhancing our level of transparency in the design and construction of our portfolios," adds Febbraro.

CWM figures Ibbotson will boost its portfolio-monitoring capabilities by helping it to gauge the efficacy of its asset diversification strategies.

"Relative to the use of historical performance, portfolio modeling and risk evaluations can be useful in mitigating some of the potential future volatility in a portfolio," says CWM's CIO Corrado Tiralongo. "This helps us provide the best risk-adjusted returns to investors."

CWM, a subsidiary of Mississauga-based Investment Planning Counsel, manages more than $2.2 billion.

Homegrown

Wealth held by high-net-worth individuals on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf region is expected to grow from $2.1 trillion in 2007 to $3.8 trillion by 2012, according to management consultancy Oliver Wyman.

And though the region has a long tradition of sending assets abroad -- Oliver Wyman estimates that 52% of high-net-worth assets in the Middle East are managed or stored offshore, the Gulf region's wealthiest investors -- frequently members of the local royalty -- are starting to repatriate assets and put them to work locally.

Next stage

Nairn, Scotland-based Mackenzie Taylor Wealth Management (MWTM) has named Colin Maloney, a former senior executive, as its new chairman. Maloney retired in December as the director pensions at Jupiter Asset Management in London.

"I bring a lot of career history with me and have experience of recruiting and motivating people," Maloney told the Scotsman last week. "Experience is one of the greatest assets you can have. If you've done things wrong in the past, you can learn from them in the future. I plan to help move the firm to the next stage."

Maloney sees the ongoing credit crisis as anything but an obstacle to Mackenzie Taylor.

"I have an almost perverse view that, because it's a difficult market, it's an ideal time to be starting," says Maloney. "When clients are worried, they want to talk more about their financial circumstances and are open to ideas."

Mackenzie Taylor manages the equivalent of about $120 million for clients across the U.K. -FWR

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