UBS targets African wealthy

UBS AG, the world’s biggest wealth manager, is targeting millionaire clients in oil-rich Nigeria and Angola as Swiss rival Credit Suisse Group AG withdraws from some African markets.
“The amount of people on the continent that fall within our wealth-management bracket is increasing every day,” Sean Bennett, UBS’ managing director for sub-Saharan Africa, said Nov. 20. “There are still tons of opportunities still relatively untapped.”
UBS is vying with Swiss banks from Julius Baer Group Ltd. to Pictet & Cie. for emerging- market millionaires as a global crackdown on tax evasion forces European and American clients to withdraw funds. While Bennett sees potential to woo super-rich customers in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Botswana, Credit Suisse is planning to withdraw from 83 markets, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to cut costs.
“The UBS strategy has been that you win market share by being onshore and for a long time,” said Sebastian Dovey, managing partner at research company Scorpio Partnership. “Credit Suisse is a smaller operation than UBS and is looking to pick its markets.”
UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti is prioritizing boosting profit at the bank’s wealth-management unit as he cuts 10,000 jobs and shrinks the investment bank by exiting most debt trading. UBS, which tops Scorpio’s 2012 ranking of wealth managers with double the $855 million of assets of fifth-placed Credit Suisse, wants that business to contribute half of pretax profit by 2015.
AFRICAN POTENTIAL
Africa, where Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote ranks 35th on a global list of richest individuals, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, may provide part of the answer. The industries contributing most to wealth creation on the continent include telecommunications, consumer, agriculture and resources, said Mr. Bennett, who rejoined UBS from HSBC Holdings PLC in 2011.
The number of Africans with at least $1 million of investible assets climbed 9.9 percent to 140,000 in 2012, according to a report published June 18 by Cap Gemini SA and Royal Bank of Canada. That was the fastest rate of increase outside North America as the economies of countries such as Nigeria and Ghana grew at more than 5 percent last year.
“There are a lot of countries that have become increasingly interesting investment opportunities,” said Mr. Bennett, who is targeting Africans with $3 million of investible assets. “They’ve all got challenges, but they’re all on the right trajectory.”
COMPLIANCE COSTS
UBS said last month that net inflows from wealthy clients in its emerging-markets division, which includes Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India, slowed in the third quarter. Net new money from those regions was 600 million francs ($654 million) in the period compared with 2.4 billion francs a year earlier, the bank said.
Credit Suisse, which is scaling back its securities division at a slower pace than UBS, is ending relationships with offshore private banking clients from 83 countries with total assets under management of about 3 billion francs, chief financial officer David Mathers said last month. The bank didn’t disclose specific countries, except to say that they have an average of 40 million francs to 45 million francs of assets.
“Given the height and complexity — and compliance costs associated with the numerous regulatory regimes in each country — we have reassessed the viability of doing business in these small markets and believe these resources will be better allocated to other growth areas with higher potential,” Mr. Mathers said.
Vanessa Neill, a spokeswoman for Credit Suisse, declined to comment.
The bank will service sub-Saharan Africa ultra-high-net-worth clients, who have more than 50 million francs of investible assets, from Johannesburg. Credit Suisse also has a representative office in Cairo.
“Credit Suisse seems to have taken the view that some of the smaller African countries are not materially advancing the company’s position,” Mr. Dovey said. “It’s refreshing that there are two separate strategies between UBS and Credit Suisse because historically the industry has taken a follow-my-leader approach and that didn’t always work.”
For the moment, Mr. Bennett sees Credit Suisse providing competition in Africa, along with banks, such as HSBC.
SELECTIVE GROWTH
Wealthy African clients usually book assets in London and Switzerland, David Bruegger, a spokesman for HSBC’s private bank, wrote in an e-mail.
“We reckon that there is potential for selective growth in the African emerging markets, primarily South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, for international banking, subject to local cross- border regulatory requirements,” Mr. Bruegger said. HSBC declined to provide figures on net inflows or client numbers.
Nigeria, the continent’s biggest oil producer and second-largest economy after South Africa, may expand 6.75% next year, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said last month.
“Nigeria is obviously the hot market, but Kenya is also producing a lot of wealth, although it’s still a relatively small market by comparison,” Mr. Bennett said.
Kenya’s growth may accelerate to 5.6% this year, the fastest pace in six years, according to Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich. Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil producer after a civil war ended in 2002, will probably grow 5.1% this year, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said last month.
“There is very strong wealth-management business, onshore and offshore, emanating from the likes of Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana,” said Mr. Dovey. “The two market regions we’re surprised that the wealth-management industry has overlooked are Africa, in parts, and Latin America, in parts, and they’ve all been drawn to Asia in spades.”
Wealth-management assets will increase with the next generation of the continent’s rich, said Mr. Bennett.
“Because a lot of the growth is more recent, Africa’s entrepreneurs still have a lot of their wealth tied up in their businesses,” he said. “The second wave, where they start to monetize their wealth, is still relatively nascent.”
(Bloomberg News)<