Swiss private bank Julius Baer's net inflows of client cash at the start of 2016 were below target, bucking the trend at larger rivals UBS and Credit Suisse. Switzerland's third-largest listed bank said on Thursday assets under management rose 2 percent to a record 305 billion Swiss francs ($309 billion) in the first four months of 2016.
But Baer's net new money growth, a volatile but important indicator of future earnings in wealth management, slipped below 3 percent and outside its medium-term target of between 4 percent and 6 percent on an annualised basis. "Net new money is still sluggish (particularly compared to the big banks' good numbers in Asia)," Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst Michael Kunz, who has a marketweight rating on the stock, wrote in a note. Shares in Baer were 0.25 percent lower at 0853 GMT, lagging a 1.3 percent rise in the European banking sector index. Overall, Credit Suisse's three wealth management divisions posted roughly 14 billion francs in first-quarter net new money. UBS, the world's biggest private bank, brought in 29 billion francs at its two private banking businesses in the same period.
Baer said its net new money target remained achievable but that inflows had been hit by slow growth in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Asian clients paying down debt, and withdrawals by Italian and French clients declaring previously untaxed assets. In recent years, Zurich-based Baer has relied on acquisitions to help grow its assets under management and last year completed the transfer of Merrill Lynch's private banking business outside of the United States.
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