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«If you could have the next 20 percent of relationship managers be as productive as this first 20 percent, you immediately double your business.»

Credit Suisse as a Dealmaker?

The fast track route to growth for private banks in the region has been acquisitions. Credit Suisse made a bid to ramp up its Asian arm with HSBC's wealth management business in Japan in 2011 – one year before Julius Baer set the bar with its purchase of Merrill Lynch’s international business.

Seven years on, how does Monnet view M&A in Asia? Credit Suisse is «very open» to acquisitions, but often stops short over eye-watering prices, according to Monnet. «Essentially, we pay three times over for the business we are buying,» he says. «We pay the shareholders, we pay the relationship managers and we even pay the clients.»

Organic China Growth

There are also operational challenges. «Many clients [at the business we are acquiring] will not meet the Credit Suisse criteria and cannot be onboarded, so we end up paying for 100 percent of the business but only acquiring 50 percent», or not being able to choose simply the front-facing business without the middle- and back-end. 

Monnet cannot comment on specific banks but reveals «we found that the banks that were up for sale had many small clients. For almost all of them, over 50 percent of their clients were very small.»

Does that mean one of the largest players in the region is bowing out of the acquisitions game? Unlikely. «We would have to look at acquisitions very opportunistically, especially where we have decided to go onshore», says Monnet. «In China, for example, we would like to build organically as a token of our long-term commitment.»