Private banking and wealth management

How do the very rich manage and grow their wealth? In this article in our Business Information series SKOLKOVO library project manager Helen Edwards describes some books and resources on private banking and wealth management.

1. The ultra high net worth banker's handbook
Heinrich Weber and Stephan Meier
Harriman House, 2009
xxiii, 269 pages; ISBN: 978905641758
Written by two leading private bankers this book discusses services for ultra high net worth clients from the perspectives of the client and the banker. Key concepts are the importance of client confidentiality and the need to understand the client's complex issues and to relate them to the financial opportunities available. Accessible and easy to read, this book contains several case studies based on the authors' experiences with clients to cover key issues: family governance, wealth structuring, risk advisory, asset management and corporate finance and asset monetising.

2. Advising ultra-affluent clients and family offices
Michael M Pompian
Wiley, 2009.
xviii, 392 pages; ISBN: 9780470282311
This author identifies as a key trend a reevaluation of trust and a desire on the part of clients to understand the services of their financial advisors: their core competencies and how they fit into the client's overall wealth management programme. The wealthiest clients are now separating advice from record keeping and investment products and looking for independent consultants to help assemble best-in-class investment products from a global spectrum of providers and then aggregate and track the results through dedicated master custodians. This is a comprehensive guidebook which lays out the separate building blocks for structuring a sophisticated wealth management solution.

3. Wealth: how the world's high-net-worth grow, sustain and manage their fortunes
Associates of Merrill Lynch and Capgemini
Wiley 2008
xxxv, 236 pages; ISBN: 9780470153031
What wealth creation opportunities now available and how can investors take advantage of them? Key trends include globalisation and advances in technology favoring a strategy of diversification of investments across different investment vehicles, asset classes and geographies. Increased sophistication of investment products and of the investors themselves present different challenges to an industry which in its essentials has been around for a long time. Additionally for the ultra high net worth client there are the important issues of family, intergenerational wealth transfer and, increasingly, philanthropic goals.

4. Global private banking and wealth management: the new realities
David Maude
Wiley, 2006.
x, 346 pages; ISBN: 978o470854211
This dense and detailed overview of the wealth management industry was published in 2006 before the financial crash but still contains much of relevance today. Chapters focus on the changes in the global market, clients and their segmentation, products and pricing, distribution channels, players, operational excellence, organisational design, regulatory and tax issues. Includes definitions of financial instruments and a glossary of terms, country wealth market analysis for 25 countries and an appendix of the FATF recommendations for combatting money laundering.

5. Bernet & Partner: Private banking library
This portal site has links to private banking surveys and reports created by researchers and consultants such as Swiss Banking Institute, Capgemini/ Merrill Lynch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Boston Consulting Group and Barclays Wealth. However most surveys date from 2009 as the very recent surveys are not usually in the public domain. For the latest information there is an overview of the 2011 Euromoney survey but the full results are only available to subscribers.