Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Investment tales from private bankers
By Neil Chatterjee
Top private bankers are no different from the rest of us when it comes to looking after their money.
Some, such as Citigroup’s head of investments in Asia and ex-Lehman banker Debashish Dutta Gupta sold everything when his former employer went bust. Others held on and took the paper losses, before increasing their fixed income exposure and slowly edging back into equities this year.
Chris Meares, the head of HSBC’s private bank, is content with his conservative portfolio. To add some juice to his fixed income portfolio, he bought some Chinese A-shares, which were perhaps overvalued but he’s sure he’ll be happy in ten years.
His main regret? If only he had followed what he told clients — to buy a basket of ten banks at the start of the year “If I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here, I’d be very rich now. I gave the advice but I didn’t do it,” he told the Summit in Singapore.
Wealth Management: What does the future hold?
Even the rich aren’t as well-off as they were a year ago but that’s not stopping the wealth management industry from focusing on what the future of private banking will look like after the economic downturn has passed. Click below to view my latest story:
