Former Credit Suisse private bank boss and later Falcon Private Bank CEO Walter Berchtold is joining a fintech firm, finews.asia has learned.
Swiss-based Sentifi, which is active in crowd intelligence, has won prominent Swiss banker Walter Berchtold as an advisor, finews.asia has learned. The former boss of Credit Suisse's private bank and CEO of troubled Falcon Private Bank until last year will support the growth strategy of Sentifi, which has offices in Zurich, London, Mumbai and Ho Chi Minh City.
The Swiss banker spent the bulk of his career in trading and investment banking – he was head of trading at then-Credit Suisse First Boston's Swiss arm – before shifting into wealth management.
Swiss Heavyweight
He was promoted to run Credit Suisse's private bank in 2006, and later stepped in as CEO of Abu Dhabi-owned Falcon when the Swiss private bank was booted from Singapore over the 1MDB scandal. Berchtold began moving Falcon towards cryptocurrency with a key tie-up with Bitcoin Suisse, but left abruptly in September after falling out with the majority shareholder.
The 56-year-old's move into fintech shows that he isn't ready to rest on his laurels yet. «I'm impressed with how Sentifi uses artificial intelligence and big data to make crowd intelligence accessible to investors and analyze it,» Berchtold said.
The firm says it uses machine learning in order to evaluate more than 14 million influencers, then linked to events which affect wealth assets globally.
Prominent Advisors
Sentifi, which uses artificial intelligence and big data, also won two other high-profile advisors: Ray Tierney, who has held senior roles at financial media and data provider Bloomberg as well as Morgan Stanley; and Rafal Czerniawski, the former tech chief for CLSA, one of Asia's largest institutional brokerages.
«Walter Berchtold will help us to further develop our global strategy in order to ideally position crowd intelligence in private banking and asset management,» Sentifi founder and CEO Anders Bally said.
