PETER SCATURRO, CHIEF executive of private bank US Trust, pithily summed up the US wealth management industry in a conference call discussing the acquisition of the firm by Bank of America in November 2006. “The US is a big place with a lot of money,” he said.
There’s no arguing with that. The growth of the high-net-worth population in the US is for the time being slowing (according to the Merrill Lynch/Capgemini World Wealth report, the number of high-net-worth individuals grew 6.8% in 2005, compared with 9.9% in 2004) but the region still boasts the greatest amount of accumulated high-net-worth wealth in the world. There are an estimated 2.9 million people with more than $1 million in investable assets in North America, 29,000 of whom have more than $30 million. The growth of this wealth is expected to be above the global average. North America’s high-net-worth wealth is forecast to grow annually at 7.4% between 2005 and 2010, compared with a global growth rate of 6%.
It’s little wonder then that in 2006 there was a surge in competition for wallet share in the US, with investments being made by domestic players expanding regionally, and foreign private banks striving to make their mark.
