Private banking 2012: Local players step up fight for CEE wealth

Who do you trust? Who do you choose? The adviser round the corner, who intimately knows you and the market you work with? Or the big regional player, with its infrastructure, balance sheet and brand?

For more than a decade, global banks and those with their sights set on a leading position across the region have dominated the whole spectrum of banking in Central and Eastern Europe, including wealth management.

But with large parts of emerging Europe going through their own financial crises over the past four years, that might be starting to change.

Private bankers across Central and Eastern Europe all say their clients exercise more caution now than before and have lost their appetite for risk.

"We have definitely noticed a certain level of uncertainty regarding our clients’ confidence in the financial markets," says Bernhard Ramsauer, head of private wealth management at Deutsche Bank in Austria. "Investment strategies...