Swiss Banks Need to Double Assets Under Management to Survive

I'm still trying to digest Wegelin not being around and Sarasin being a Safra property. If any more of them get merged out of existence I will definitely feel unmoored.
From International Adviser:

KPMG survey: Swiss banks need twice the AUM 

Swiss private banks will need to double their assets under management if they are to survive in a climate of consolidation, smaller margins and growing regulatory requirements, a new KPMG study of Swiss banks finds.

Two thirds of the 39 banks interviewed in the KMPG Switzerland survey agree that because of these challenges – and the increased complexity of their clients’ wealth management needs –  private banks of the future will need to enlarge and increase their assets under management to at least CHFbn Swiss francs (€ 8.1bn, £6.8bn, $11bn).

“To achieve critical mass, many private banks need to grow substantially,” the report stated.

This is the approach that Swiss Bank Julius Baer has adopted with its acquisition of Merrill Lynch’s International Wealth Management business outside the US, which, the bank says, will bring the group’s presence to more than 25 countries and 50 locations.

While larger banks are pursuing expansion, KPMG recommends that smaller, typically private Swiss institutions needed to focus on “networking, partnerships and increased focus on technology to compensate for smaller economies of scale".

Over the next 10 years, most banks therefore are expected to focus increasingly on clients with assets of between CHF1m and CHF5m,  the survey revealed....MORE

And from the Financial Times:
Saving the poisoned Swiss cash cow

As they collected gongs from PWM at a recent ceremony in the Kempinski hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, private banking bosses did their best to strut in time to anthemic walk-up songs from Tina Turner, Carly Simon, and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”.

Many had much to celebrate. UBS, for one, has restructured and bounced back from a near-death experience to its perch of leading global wealth manager, although its managed assets of SFr862bn ($946bn) remain well below the SFr2.3tn pre-crisis

The role of Swiss private banks has changed beyond recognition. Once perceived as hiding places for cash hoarded by dictators, criminals and tax dodgers, many are now big participants in social impact investing and philanthropy projects. They help distribute the wealth of billionaires.

Banks such as Lombard Odier and Pictet have led the transformation. They have expanded across borders, specialising in investments packaged as mutual funds while divesting themselves of clandestine unlimited liability partnership status in favour of more transparent reporting....MORE

....It is now 40 years since Deep Purple released “Smoke on the Water” about their concert in nearby Montreux. It tells the true story of how festival organiser “Funky Claude” rescued audience members from a raging fire that burnt a casino to the ground. Swiss banks searching for such a saviour could have a long wait....

As noted in one of our Wegelin posts:

...I think that leaves Banque J.P. Hottinguer & Cie's successor-Banque Hottinger & Cie as the oldest or at least the oldest family-owned bank in Switzerland.
Here's the Henokeins Association of most of the world's oldest family businesses, it looks like Hottinguer nudges out Lombard Odier by a decade and Pictet by 19 years.

So now we figure out who sells and who buys.