The bank is adding more than a dozen bankers to its operations in Italy, hiring from Credit Suisse.

Deutsche Bank, which has vowed to boost its wealth management operations even as it cuts other parts of its business, has made a raft of senior wealth hires from Credit Suisse.

The most senior recruit is Roberto Coletta, who is named market head of wealth management for Italy.

In his new role, Coletta will report to Roberto Parazzini, who has led the Italian team on an interim basis in recent months since his recent promotion to head of wealth management for Southern & Western Europe. Coletta will also report to Flavio Valeri, chief country officer of Italy for Deutsche Bank. He will be responsible for the bank’s high net worth and ultra-high net worth Italian clients, and for the products and services platform of the Italian business.

Most recently, Coletta led the UHNW Individual segment for the Italian market area (Coverage, Family Office Team and Corporate Advisory) at Credit Suisse, for six years. (That group included the Italian activities of UHNW clients in Italy, the UK and Luxembourg within the International Wealth Management unit.) Prior to this, he was responsible for the private banking activities of the Key Clients Team at BNL-BNP Paribas Private Banking. He started his career managing personal wealth in Banca di Roma, Gruppo Banca CR Firenze and in Banca Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna.

WealthBriefing understands that about a dozen former Credit Suisse bankers are joining Coletta. The Italian market, while buffeted by some of the difficulties in the Italian local economy, has also been boosted on the other hand by the government’s moves a few years ago to attract wealthy investors through a form of non-domiciled residency regime loosely resembling that of the UK.

Big plans
The Frankfurt-listed bank intends to add hundreds of client-facing staff to its wealth operations worldwide in the next two years. That move contrasts with its recently-announced plans to shut part of its equities operations and slash risk exposures to its investment bank. Those measures will result in up to 18,000 jobs being axed, about a fifth of the bank’s total payroll.

"The arrival of Roberto Coletta as head of the Italian team is another important step in the broader global growth strategy of Wealth Management, which includes hiring 300 new relationship and investment managers by 2021,” Claudio de Sanctis, head of Wealth Management Europe at Deutsche Bank, said.

“One of our main areas of focus is Europe, where we want to expand our client base and contribute to the growth of Deutsche Bank Group, based on our reputation for outstanding service and our well-established relationships with families and entrepreneurs here, especially in Germany, in southern Europe, led by Italy, and in the UK,” he said.

In total, Deutsche’s wealth arm oversaw about €300 billion of assets as at 31 March this year and the Italian market is second only to Germany as its largest country for business. There are seven offices in Italy: Milan, Lecco, Turin, Verona, Florence, Rome and Naples. The group has 27 client advisors, serving more than 800 clients.

Among recent hires at Deutsche’s wealth arm are the following:

Americas:
-- Angel Chen, from City National, RM managing director, Los Angeles (announced June 2019);

-- Michael Rogers, from Merrill Lynch, RM, managing director, Los Angeles, new head of West Coast (June 2019);

-- Wendy McMillan, from Wells Fargo, private banker in San Francisco (Oct 2018),

 Europe:
-- Piers Harris, from Credit Suisse, relationship manager UK (to start in Aug 2019);

-- Stefanie Ruehl Hofmann, from HypoVereinnsbank/UniCredit, (started April 2019);

-- Martina Fischer, from Goldman Sachs, UHNW banker, Germany (Jan 2019); and

-- Claudio de Sanctis, from Credit Suisse, head of WM Europe (Dec 2018).

Emerging Markets:
-- Jackie Lit, from DBS Private Bank, RM, North Asia (covering China) (announced April 2019); and

-- Ahmed Hammouda, from Credit Suisse - head of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) desk Geneva.