Banque Syz & Co, the Swiss private bank, could spend as much as SFr200 million acquisitions, its owner is reported to have said a few days after earlier saying it might be a contender to buy part of the international arm of Coutts.

Banque Syz & Co, the Swiss private bank, could spend as much as SFr200 million ($219 million) on acquisitions, its owner is reported to have said a few days after the bank said it might be a contender to buy part of the international arm of Coutts.

Co-founder, chief executive and 92 per cent-owner of the firm, Eric Syz, says Geneva-headquartered Banque Syz & Co is not looking to be sold.

"We're always looking [at deals]. We've looked at three potential deals this year and two last year, but none of them worked out, mainly because of our quality standards," he told Reuters.

"You really only have one name and one reputation, and we don't want to jeopardise it,” he is quoted as having said.

WealthBriefing interviewed Banque Syz & Co recently at its offices in Rue de Rhône, Geneva, and the bank stressed that its youth means that it doesn’t come with some of the reputational baggage of its older peers when it comes to undeclared cash. With that issue in mind, the bank will want to be careful that if it does buy other businesses in Switzerland that any assets are fully regularised. (To see another story about the bank and its M&A comments, see here.)

"As we do not have a legacy problem, we are very prudent. We have no desire to buy something to resolve someone else's problem," Eric Syz told the news service this week - the bank was established in 1996.

"We either want clean portfolios or, if we're not dealing with particularly clean assets, we don't want to pay much for them," he added.

The Reuters report, which brands the Swiss bank as a “minnow”, said the firm “lost two of three partners when Alfredo Piacentini and Paolo Luban left this year”. A spokesperson for Banque Syz told this publication that “the fact that two partners left this year was not a surprise. We prepared it since long time with excellent recruitments and an experienced executive committee at the group level”.

The news wire report also stated that with private banking assets of around SFr13 billion, this was at a level “close to what is viewed by experts as the minimum requirement for profitable survival”, but the spokesperson told this publication that the firm’s profitability is based on its total AuM figure of SFr35 million, not only on private banking.