ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer posted modest cash flows in the first four months of the year, disappointing investors who had hoped to profit from Credit Suisse’s crisis and sending its shares down as much as 8%.
The bank, which competes with Credit Suisse and UBS in managing the investments of the wealthy and ultra-wealthy, remains primed to attract more business as a result of the unrest that led to the March acquisition of Credit Suisse by its rival UBS. Went.
However, in its activity report, Julius Baer says that despite improving inflows after a slow start to the year, they amounted to 3.5 billion Swiss francs ($3.94 billion) between January and April, while assets under management only grew by 1%, to 429 billion Swiss francs.
The figures were lower than expected as some analysts saw twice the inflows, although some warned that it could take longer for Julius Baer to attract funds from Credit Suisse.
RBC analysts said they forecast net inflows adjusted for risk reduction and the impact of customer indebtedness of 6 billion Swiss francs in the first four months of this year, following strong momentum from the last two months of last year.
Julius Baer reported its 2022 results in February, several weeks before UBS agreed to take over Credit Suisse as part of a Swiss government-orchestrated bailout, saying that Credit Suisse’s problems had prevented new funds from being raised. contributed to the flow. , especially at the end of the year. ,
It made no reference to its Swiss rivals in its January-April update, but said it was well-positioned to attract more funding later in the year by hiring more relationship managers.
Julius Baer said, “Looking to the future, the significant current and future growth of the group’s relationship manager base is expected to deliver significant net new cash generation over the medium term.”
(1 dollar = 0.8889 Swiss franc)
