February 2009
Private banking: Families seek havens from the storm
Super-rich families that have weathered the Madoff fraud and fund blow-ups, or are uneasy with state support for the parents of their private banks, are turning to independents or multi-family offices for wealth advice. Helen Avery reports.
THE TURN OF the year was a bitter time for some of the super-rich. "Many wealthy families were unsure whether to send a Christmas card to their private banks this year, or a writ," says the former head of a large UK family office. He has a point. The insistence by private banks that they are on the same side as the client, that only appropriate products will be recommended, and that there is no incentive for the bank to invest client money in particular funds, has been blown out of the water by revelations of investments in Bernie Madoff’s funds and, in the UK, in an AIG fund.
...
The rest of this article is only available to subscribers
If you are already a subscriber please log in now to view this article, by entering your username (email address) and password at the top right-hand side of this page.
If you are not a subscriber just subscribe today for full access to this article. You can do this either by clicking the link or calling +44 (0)207 779 8999.
If you are a trialist or subscriber, please enter your username and password at the top right-hand side of euromoney.com
Subscribers to Euromoney benefit from:
- 12 months access in print and online - on euromoney.com, read the latest issue early online, search for specific developments by region or sector, interrogate the results of Euromoney's benchmark polls, and view the archive dating back to 1996
- More than 30 specialist research guides free
- The results of Euromoney’s polls and surveys
- Tailored RSS news feeds direct to your desktop
- News delivered directly to your mobile device or PC
- Personalised email newsfeed of 'Top stories' and 'Breaking news'
Click here to subscribe