Julius Baer shareholders back GAM spin-off

ZURICH, June 30 (Reuters) - Shareholders at Julius Baer (BAER.VX) on Tuesday gave a green light to the company's plan to split its core private bank and asset management operations into two separately listed companies.

Shareholders in Switzerland's biggest dedicated wealth manager will receive one share in each of the two new units for every share they currently own in the holding company.

The two resulting companies will be listed separately on the Swiss stock exchange, a move investors have welcomed as shielding Baer's cash-generating businesses from troubled hedge fund arm GAM. [ID:nLK568689]

Baer's spin-off of its asset management operations has been seen as a sign of things to come for the banking industry as a whole, and preceded Barclays (BARC.L) decision to sell its BGI to Blackrock for $13.5 billion to form the world's largest asset manager. [ID:nL8603346]

(Reporting by Jason Rhodes; Editing by David Cowell)