With the recent acquisition of the Belgian private bank Degroof Petercam, the French Indosuez Wealth Management is moving into a new league.

The merger of two major banks doesn't necessarily lead to a financial institution that's twice as large, said Jacques Prost in an interview with the French-speaking Swiss daily newspaper «Le Temps» (in French, behind paywall) on Monday. Instead, such a merger would lead to redundancies, opening new windows for other banks, the CEO of Indosuez Wealth Management (Indosuez) said.

Indosuez, the private bank of the French Crédit Agricole group, sees itself in a promising position. It recently acquired Belgian private bank Degroof Petercam, which catapults it into a new league with 200 billion Swiss francs in client assets under management, as also reported by finews.com. At the same time, it's been present in Switzerland for 145 years and can reflect on a long experience in business with wealthy individuals, families, and companies in this country.

Three Business Areas

Indosuez is active in three business areas: firstly, in traditional asset management as a private bank; secondly, as an investment bank with the help of the services of its parent group, Crédit Agricole; and thirdly, with the Azqore brand, which offers IT services in the financial sector.

The bank is pushing its private equity business in Switzerland, whereby Indosuez has already been active in this domain for twenty years, as Prost explains. Because of the high quality of banking staff in this country, he says, it is also attractive to run this line of private market investing from Switzerland. «Geneva is now a real hub for finding talent,» Prost says, also referring to the close cooperation with Swiss universities such as EPFL in Lausanne and ETH in Zurich.

Foundation of Stability

While Prost acknowledges the turmoil surrounding Credit Suisse hurt the local financial industry, from a global perspective, Switzerland remains a highly stable country, politically, economically, and fiscally. This is even more important in the current geopolitical context, he said. «In asset management, you must never forget these foundations of solidity and stability,» the Indosuez CEO said.