The board of directors of Switzerland’s Vontobel Group has announced a number of promotions which will come into effect on 1 April.

Within its private banking division, Vontobel is promoting
Pietro Radicioni
and
Stefan Schneider to the role of managing director, while within asset management
Lukas Bolfing and
Andreas Nigg will assume MD roles.

In other news,
Stephan Fritz has recently taken over as chief executive of Vontobel’s alternative investments subsidiary Harcourt. Mr Fritz, who has been with Harcourt since 2006, replaced
Peter Franconi, who is to take over management of Vontobel's private banking business unit.

In its full year results, Vontobel said it had recorded a net profit of SFr113 million ($96.33 million) for 2008, a drop of 58 per cent from the previous year. Vontobel had posted net profit of SFr268.3 million in 2007.

The bank announced net inflows of SFr3.9 billion for its private banking and asset management division in 2008. As a result of the turbulence in the financial markets, assets under management declined by 22 per cent to SFr62.4 billion.

The bank said in a statement that it would continue to pursue its course of international expansion, but would simultaneously try to achieve cost savings of at least SFr40‑50 million by the end of 2010. It did not indicate whether such cost savings would involve job cuts.