TABLE OF CONTENTS Switzerland's strength has traditionally been, and remains, in private banking. This is a business greatly enhanced by globalization. In today's world, there are sixty to seventy countries whose citizens have surplus money and want to invest in a safer place than their own, while there are six or seven centres with expertise in wealth management, and with the necessary infrastructure. Swiss banks lead in the lucrative business of private banking, but they are followed closely by challengers.
Private banking is an assets gathering and managing business, which has helped many credit institutions to turn in their best performance year after year. Switzerland's UBS, for example, controls the world's biggest private bank, and its profitability has been consistently helped by good results from its private banking unit, a reward for the attention that it brings to its private clients. Investors are the people who today constitute the new global ownership society.
As this and subsequent chapters demonstrate, closely connected to the private banking business are an entity's asset management operations addressed to institutional investors, which can bring to the bank's treasury a stream of net new money. Up to a point, private banking and asset management for institutional investors tend to merge. As briefly stated in the Preface, this happens for three reasons:
