Juerg Zeltner, UBS' ex-top private banker, is adding another big wealth management role, finews.asia has learned. The new gig deepens his ties to tiny but oil-rich Qatar.
Deutsche Bank will nominate Swiss banker Juerg Zeltner to its board in coming days, two sources familiar with the matter told finews.asia. The move comes shortly after the former UBS top shot clinched European backing as CEO of KBL European Private Bankers, a Luxembourg-based bank.
KBL, with 72 billion euros ($80 billion) in assets, is a wealth management minnow compared to the German lender, which manages roughly $250 trillion on behalf of the rich. Qatar is the common denominator between the two: the emirate's ruling Al-Thani family holds KBL as a private investment, and Qatar is also a 6.1 percent shareholder in the battered German lender.
Conflict of Interest?
Zeltner's role as a member of Deutsche's so-called supervisory board, which includes union as well as staff representation, isn't believed to pose a conflict of interest, both of the people said, citing the disparate size of KBL and Deutsche. Spokesmen for KBL and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. The news was first reported by «Bloomberg» on Monday.
Fifty-two-year-old Zeltner is expected to be nominated as a non-independent director, and be approved at Deutsche's next shareholder meeting next May. Zeltner resurfaced with a bang last May when he bought a «significant» stake in KBL, a network of private banks in Europe and the U.K., including Germany's Merck Finck and Brown Shipley in the U.K.
Swiss Coup
His nomination comes as both Deutsche and KBL pour hefty resources into expanding their respective wealth management activities. Deutsche's aggressive poaching of private bankers such as in Switzerland comes against the backdrop of a cull of roughly 18,000 staff elsewhere, mainly in investment banking.
At KBL, CEO Zeltner already has a coup lined up: he wants to buy Bank am Bellevue, as finews.com reported exclusively in June. Switzerland, the world’s largest offshore banking market, represents a gap in KBL's European plans: Bellevue would mean a relatively swift and economical way to a Swiss banking license.
