Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Geneva is for wealth management
Even for an American who’s not wealthy, Geneva has a reputation as a global centre for wealth management – the place the world’s rich come to stash their money and (they hope) make it grow.
But you don’t necessarily expect it to be so aggressive — after all, the rich tend to be demure when it comes to their banking.
Imagine one reporter’s surprise, then, on arriving in the airport in Geneva and seeing bank ads everywhere. Think of the casino adds in Las Vegas’s McCarron Airport or the technology ads in San Jose’s Mineta Airport: it’s the exactly the same in Geneva, only with wealth managers.
Look left – there’s UBS. Look right – there’s Julius Baer. Look up in the baggage queue – there’s a Swiss bank that emphasises a focus on the Arab world. A complete unscientific guesstimate suggests the display ads in the terminal run about 75 percent wealth management and 25 percent fine watches. (No surprise that every other storefront in the Ville Centre area of Geneva has watches on offer.)
There is one plus to all of the bank ads in the airport for the less wealthy though. Tell your cab driver to head toward their addresses and you’re likely to find the city’s best cafes.
Smaller cities’ real estate to stall- what are your town’s prospects?
New York and a handful of other major U.S. cities are down, but will never be out as far as their commercial real estate goes, a leading New York real estate private equity investor said Monday at the Reuters Global Real Estate Summit.
“New York’s not going away- it’s THE global city.”
Second tier cities are another matter entirely, said Thomas Shapiro, president of GoldenTree InSite Partners. “We are a big believer in the big city theory which is that the bigger cities will continue do better, to the detriment of secondary cities.”
Companies always go to where the best talent is, he explained, meaning cities such as his big five– New York, LA, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago– remain magnets, their status self-perpetuating
“Goldman Sachs is not moving to Miami because the intellectual capital is in New York- ditto Boston, ditto San Francisco, ditto LA.”
Here’s Shapiro’s prognosis for how some other U.S. cities will fare as the real estate market recovers:
San Francisco: one of the top markets, Shapiro said, because “San Francisco has a diversified economy.” Chicago: “It’s a boom and bust town, but it is an important center.”
