News

By Giles Broom
(Bloomberg)

Reyl & Cie., a Geneva-based bank and asset 
manager, said it will rely on income from capital market, deal-
making and corporate restructuring services to offset lower
 profitability in traditional Swiss private banking.
 Reyl expects its corporate advisory unit to contribute 
about 25 percent of the firm’s revenue by 2018, compared with 
about 10 percent last year, according to Christian Fringhian,
49, a member of Reyl’s executive committee who oversees the 
unit. Reyl organized a bond issue to finance the acquisition of
 two food plants and arranged for the purchase of debt from
 creditors to turn around a struggling company, among recent
 actions for clients.


Swiss private banks are under pressure as tax compliance,
 regulation, the strong franc and low interest rates squeeze 
margins. Reyl, founded in 1973 to manage the wealth of affluent
Europeans, has spent the past decade diversifying its business
 by offering fund management, custody and non-financial private
 client services and opening offices in Singapore, London, Dubai 
and California. Fringhian, a former investment banker at
 JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc, joined
 three years ago.


“All the banks in Switzerland are going through challenging 
times, with regulatory costs rising,” Fringhian said in an 
interview. “Most of Reyl’s clients are business owners and they
want corporate advisory services in addition to wealth 
management.”