People Moves
Julius Baer's Thailand JV Names New Chief Executive

The previous CEO had left the bank late last year. Julius Baer's JV with Siam Commercial Bank is part of a move by such Western lenders to work with local players and tap into growing wealth in Southeast Asia.
SCB Julius Baer, the wealth management joint venture between
Siam
Commercial Bank and Julius Baer, has
appointed Lalitphat Toranavikrai as new CEO to replace Jiralawan
Tangitvet who had left late last year after being in the post for
seven months.
Toranavikrai is taking up the role with immediate effect. Prior
to this, she was head of the Private Banking and FIRST Division
at SCB. She has been with SCB for 12 years, Julius Baer said in a
statement yesterday.
Since joining SCB in 2008, Toranavikrai has had various senior
management roles covering the wealth management business. Prior
to that, she was a senior banker at RBS Coutts in Singapore and
deputy head of Corporate and Investment Banking at BNP Paribas
Thailand.
“She brings with her very strong domestic knowledge and extensive
experience which will be vital as we continue our ambitious plans
to grow and develop the Thai wealth management business for the
joint venture,” Arthid Nanthawithaya, chief executive and
chairman of the executive committee, Siam Commercial Bank, and
chairman of the board of directors, SCB-Julius Baer Securities
Co, said.
Julius Baer has stated that Asia is its second home market. It
has pushed into the Thai sector - as also highlighted by a wealth
report it published in the summer - and other firms have
similarly stepped up operations in the Southeast Asian country.
There has also been a well-publicised battle for talent in the
Asian wealth management space, with banks such as Julius Baer
seeing their share of entrants and departures.
At the global level, Julius Baer in July 2019 named a new chief
executive, Philipp Rickenbacher, who took up the post on 1
September. He succeeded Bernhard Hodler, who had been in the post
since 2017 after taking up the role in the wake of the departure
of Boris Collardi that year. (Collardi went across to Pictet,
which has been vigorously recruiting private bankers in a number
of markets, including Asia.)
Among recent Thailand developments with other firms, DBS Bank has
partnered with its Thailand securities business to double wealth
assets under management in the country to S$8 billion ($5.82
billion) by 2023, another sign of firms chasing high net worth
clients in this region. The bank also intends to double its
headcount in Thailand. The partnership brought together DBS Bank
and DBS Vickers Securities (Thailand).
There are more than 122,000 HNW individuals in Thailand (as of
2017), almost equal to the number in Singapore. Thai wealth
assets under management grew at a compound annual growth rate of
12.7 per cent between 2010 and 2017. This fact has not gone
unnoticed: In early March, Liechtenstein-based LGT created a Thai
business, called LGT Securities (Thailand) Limited. Some firms
have been in the country for some time, such as Credit Suisse,
which recently named a new Thailand CEO. Thailand’s overall
wealth market is estimated to be around $300 billion, with a
rapidly growing population of high net worth individuals of
approximately 30,000, according to the Boston Consulting Group
Global Wealth Report 2017. Thailand also operates a form of what
are dubbed "golden visas" for HNW individuals. (See a recent
article here.)