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Julius Baer's Thailand JV Chief Executive Departs
Tom Burroughes
15 November 2019
Julius Baer's foray into Thailand's wealth management market via a joint venture with Siam Commercial Bank has been jolted. Media reports said that Jiralawan Tangitvet, the JV's chief executive, has resigned after being in post for seven months. At the global level, Julius Baer in July 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.)
When asked by WealthBriefingAsia for a comment about reports in local Asian media, Zurich-listed declined to comment.
The CEO had joined SCB-Julius Baer, as the JV was called, in April and had previously worked at Kasikorn Securities as a managing director.
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.
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 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 hasn’t 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 editorial here.)