UBS Targets Wealthy Nigerians And Angolans After Credit Suisse Takes Step Back

UBS AG (UBSN), 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, the Johannesburg-based managing director of UBS in sub-Saharan Africa, said in a Nov. 20 interview. “There’s 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 London-based research company Scorpio Partnership. “Credit Suisse is a smaller operation than UBS and is looking to pick its markets.”

UBS Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti is prioritising boosting profit at the Zurich-based 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.

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African Potential

Africa, where Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote ranks 35th on a global rich list, 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 Bennett, 44, who rejoined UBS from HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) in 2011.

The number of Africans with at least $1 million of investable assets climbed 9.9 percent to 140,000 in 2012, according to a report published on June 18 by Cap Gemini SA (CAP) 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 Bennett, who is targeting Africans with $3 million of investable 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, which 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,” Mathers said.

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Separate Strategies

Vanessa Neill, a spokeswoman for Credit Suisse in London, declined to comment on the company’s Africa strategy.

The bank, which has offices in Johannesburg and Cairo, plans to boost profitability by increasing lending to ultra-high-net-worth clients with more than 50 million francs of investable assets, especially in emerging markets.

“Credit Suisse seems to have taken the view that some of the smaller African countries are not materially advancing the company’s position,” said Dovey of Scorpio. “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, Bennett sees Credit Suisse providing competition in Africa, along with banks, such as HSBC.

Wealthy African clients usually book assets in London and Switzerland, David Bruegger, a Zurich-based spokesman for HSBC’s private bank, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Selective Growth

“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,” said Bruegger. 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 percent next year, the country’s Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said last month. Kenya’s growth may accelerate to 5.6 percent this year, the fastest pace in six years, according to Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich. Angola, Africa’s second-largest oil producer after a 27-year civil war ended in 2002, will probably grow 5.1 percent this year, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said last month.

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“There is very strong wealth-management business, onshore and offshore, emanating from the likes of Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana,” said 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 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.”

Article culled from Bloomberg.