In wealth management, it's all about the personal touches. At its half-year results, HSBC said it expected Asia to generate half of its private banking assets under management within five years, up from 30 per cent now. But the ambitions of the world's third-largest bank by market capitalisation were yesterday checked by the 132nd largest. OCBC of Singapore, the city-state's number three lender, matched the Big Elephant's bid for ING's Asian wealth business. With HSBC unwilling to offer more, OCBC won out thanks to a pledge to shield its new staff from redundancies.
Wealth management is proving its worth in the crisis. In recent financial statements from UBS – recently toppled by Bank of America as the world's biggest private bank by assets under management, on Scorpio Partnership's reckoning – wealth has been one of a few line items not permanently clad in brackets. It is in Asia, moreover, where growth is strongest, where regulatory interference is lightest, and where market share can be gained with least effort: since much of the wealth is new money, challengers are not bumping up against ancient distribution and referral networks. ING is selling because it has to – a €10bn lifeline from the Dutch government last October will not repay itself.
The price tag of $1.46bn, adjusted for capital already in the target business, is equivalent to about 5.8 per cent of AUM – well in excess of the 2.3 per cent Julius Baer just paid for ING's Swiss wealth business. Allowing a determined seller to book a €300m profit on disposal seems charitable, to put it mildly. But this will more than triple OCBC's AUM, vaulting it into Asia's top 10, on estimates by Singapore-based Calamander Capital. And how many other banking products these days yield a consistent 20 to 25 per cent return on equity? Roll out the thick red carpet.