The Swiss private bank is shutting down a six-year effort with the ultra-rich and family offices, finews.asia can reveal.
Union Bancaire Privée is closing FOSS, a service which had sought to advise super-wealthy families on setting up their own family offices or choosing a multi-family office. «FOSS Family Office Advisory has stopped its advisory activity,» according to its website.
The move ends a ten-year effort in Zurich under co-founders Jan van Bueren and Thomas Ming, who is also head of UBP’s life insurance platform. Van Bueren, who didn’t comment to finews.asia, is poised to leave UBP, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Tracking Family Offices
UBP confirmed the move and van Bueren's exit, without elaborating on the reasons. «UBP will continue to develop its value proposition towards high net worth families and family offices, leveraging on its wealth planning and asset management capabilities,» the bank said.
Controlled by the de Picciotto family, the Swiss bank had set up FOSS in 2014 as an integral part of its wealth and estate planning process for ultra-high net worth individuals, whether they were UBP clients or not.
FOSS maintained data on most Swiss-based multi-family offices, including size, expertise, track record, client base, and investment offering.
Asia Reach
The FOSS unit had only recently expanded in Asia and it was reportedly focused on advisory services in early 2020 for single family offices with at least $200-300 million assets under management.
It was also focused on building a database of multi-family offices in the region.
