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Julius Baer Adds Another Country Of Clients - This Time It's The Netherlands
Julius Baer has transferred Merrill Lynch’s International Wealth Management in the Netherlands, adding to the list of geographies where it has switched over clients.
Julius Baer has transferred Merrill Lynch’s International Wealth Management in the Netherlands, adding to the list of geographies where it has switched over clients since buying the non-US arm of Bank of America’s wealth business over a year ago. The Swiss bank also said it sees “significant” potential for hiring new managers in the country.
The development means Zurich-listed Julius Baer adds the Netherlands business to operations such as in the UK. So far the businesses located in Switzerland, Uruguay, Chile, Luxembourg, Monaco, Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, Spain, Israel, Panama, Bahrain, Lebanon and the UAE have started or completed the transfer process as planned. The integration phase, which was launched in February 2013, is expected to be completed in the first half of 2015. To see an interview with Julius Baer on how it has gone about moving across the Merrill Lynch IWM clients, see here.
Merrill Lynch has run wealth management activities in the Dutch market for more than 50 years, shifting its focus to private banking and servicing high net worth individuals in the early 1990s.
The employees and client relationships of Merrill Lynch’s private banking entity in the Netherlands transferred to the Julius Baer platform on 10 and 11 May.
“We have also identified significant potential for hiring talented private banking professionals and enhancing our presence in the Netherlands,” Gian Rossi, head of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe at Julius Baer, said.
Geoffrey Bruyn, former head of wealth management Netherlands Merrill Lynch and future head of Julius Baer (Netherlands), joins the group together with his entire team.
The new Dutch business of Julius Baer will be run as a subsidiary of Julius Baer Group; the offices will be located in the Rembrandt Tower (Amstelplein 1) in Amsterdam.
Julius Baer’s total client assets amounted to SFr348 billion ($392.5 billion) at the end of 2013, including SFr254 billion of assets under management.
