It’s hard to imagine that a banker who represents multimillionaires would be anything but professional - but a top executive at a leading global bank thinks that’s precisely the wealth management industry’s problem.

“There is so much mediocrity in the industry we have to raise the bar here,” said Gerard Aquilina, vice chairman of Barclays Wealth, at the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Geneva.

    To Aquilina’s way of thinking, private bankers need the same “institutional rigor” as investment bankers in the way they operate. To this end the bank is looking to pursue only top-quality hires.

“Our strategy is not to be the hoover that comes and hires willy-nilly, we want to be much more selective,” said Aquilina — perhaps an ironic view given Barclays acquired thousands of investment bankers from the ashes of the fallen Lehman Brothers last year.

    But he and his colleagues are so sure of their position that he said they are working on developing MBA-level courses with some unnamed top universities on private banking, especially as they see fewer and fewer interns turning up their noses at the prospect of a three-month rotation in the private banking shop.

    They’re not alone, either. Alexander Classen, head of EMEA wealth management for Morgan Stanley, said his firm too was seeing more and more people turn up to recruiting presentations on college campuses, whereas at one time they would have summarily shunned the private bankers for the investment banking sessions.

Things may have changed since then, but private banks may still have their work cut out if they want to attract talent early. After all, as Aquilina himself admitted, ”There are not many people at eighteen who say, ‘Hey Dad, I want to be a private banker’. Most people just fall into it.”

A few years ago, domestic and international financial players were chomping at the bit to lure Mrs. Watanabe’s millions of yen or fellow Asians’ yuan, won or dollar holdings from their futons or equal-interest savings accounts.

The global financial crisis in the last year has sparked a rejigging of foreign institutions’ expectations about Asian wealth and their own ability to attract it, with some opting out of the game altogether.

Barclays Asia-Pacific CEO Robert Morrice isn’t letting his rivals’ woes temper enthusiasm.

He says the No.2 British bank will boost staff and its private banking arm, Barclays Wealth, expects to manage $20 billion in Asia outside of Japan by 2012, compared with $10 billion at end of this year.

“We see some very interesting opportunities in that space. We believe we’re still small and need to grow the business aggressively,” he told the Reuters Japan Investment Summit. “We need to be patient and pick our spots.”

India has been one of those, likely to hit $1 billion under management by the end of this year, while its overall staff there now number 7,000.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Toru Hanai

This week we’re getting inside views from some of the biggest names in retail…from high-end fashion houses like Hermes to department store chain J.C. Penney. Optimism among those in the industry about a turnaround toward the end of 2009 springs eternal…but what are you seeing? Where are you spending? Or, are you trading down? Ditching Saks and heading to Target? Barclays retail analyst Bob Drbul says the key for consumers in the current economic environment, no matter where they shop, is “value.” Click here to hear his thoughts:

Are you changing your buying behavior? from Reuters TV on Vimeo.