Credit Suisse to expand private bank worldwide

By Thomas Atkins

ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse Group (CSGN.VX) bucked a financial sector trend on Thursday, announcing a worldwide expansion plan for its flagship private banking arm.

In sharp contrast to layoffs elsewhere in a financial sector hard-hit by the credit crisis, Credit Suisse said the division was "well-positioned to excel in the current market conditions."

It aims to add 1,000 new bankers to serve wealthy clients by 2010, taking the total to around 4,100.

The Swiss group said it expected net new assets in its wealth management division to grow by over 6 percent a year, and that long-term growth prospects for the wealth management industry were intact, according to presentation slides to be delivered at an investor conference.

"They're looking to put another 10 percent per annum in financial advisers into the business, which suggests a relatively positive point of view," said analyst Alan Webborn at bank Societe Generale.

Shares in Credit Suisse were up 1.7 percent at 60.45 francs at 4:20 a.m. EST, in line with a 1.7 percent gain in the Dow Jones index of major European banks.

Wealth managers -- who invest money for rich people -- have largely escaped fallout from the credit crisis, which has seen the world's biggest banks come hat-in-hand to investors to shore up equity bases badly damaged by billions in writeoffs.

CONTRAST

Swiss rival bank UBS AG (UBSN.VX), seen as Europe's biggest casualty of the subprime crisis with $14.5 billion of writedowns, expects to face angry shareholders at an extraordinary meeting on February 27 to approve a 13 billion Swiss franc ($11.79 billion) capital injection by Singapore and an unnamed Middle East investor.

And banks including Citigroup (C.N) and Merrill Lynch MER.N have sought billions of dollars of emergency funding from wealthy sovereign funds.

Credit Suisse, which has escaped the crisis relatively unscathed so far, said its expansion plans target Latin America, Europe, India, Japan, the United States and the Middle East.

Credit Suisse said it aimed to build a comprehensive wealth management operation in the United States, establish an onshore presence in Japan in 2008 and enter the onshore markets in Mexico and Brazil.

The group said it expected around 1.6 billion Swiss francs in revenue synergies in 2007 resulting from its "One Bank" strategy designed to capture business arising within different business segments in the group.

That compares to 1.2 billion francs in synergies from the strategy produced in 2006, according to the presentation.

(Reporting by Thomas Atkins; Editing by Paul Bolding and Andrew Callus)