New | Investment banks taking aim at growing ranks of super rich
"Family offices are for life, I always say. If you don’t have patience, if you don’t want to engage in a non-transactional way, don’t bother" - Campden
The growing ranks of the super rich and their increased appetite for risk have caught the eye of investment bankers.
Traditionally focused on companies and institutions, investment banks are hiring staff and reorganising teams to cater to wealthy clans, from Chinese multi-millionaires to old world dynasties in Europe and the United States.
While some such families have been involved in direct investment for years, many more are just getting interested, seeing more potential for profit there than in funds or markets.
"The global scale of this is meaningful so the group takes notice," said Philip Higson, Vice Chairman of the Global Family Office Group at Swiss bank UBS which, like others, had previously courted individuals via its wealth management arm.
Unsurprisingly, investment banks in Switzerland, the global hub of wealth management, have led the way in targeting family offices, the private firms that manage the financial affairs of the richest families.
But US banks are also deploying more investment bankers to focus on the super rich, whose numbers are on the rise. At the top end, a study by UBS and consulting firm Wealth-X identified 2,325 billionaires last year, up 7.1 per cent over 2013.