The Swiss lender, which has confirmed the arrival of a new CEO next year, has reported its latest financial figures for assets and inflows.

Julius Baer yesterday reported a “substantial” rise in assets under management for the first 10 months of 2024.

It also confirmed that Stefan Bollinger (pictured) will take up the CEO slot on 9 January 2025, after the lender announced the appointment in July. Bollinger took the role vacated earlier this year by the exit of Philipp Rickenbacher, following heavy losses sustained by the bank from loans to a conglomerate.

AuM stood at SFr480 billion ($543.2 billion) at the end of October, a rise of 12 per cent on the same 10-month period in 2023. Rising stock markets and client inflows pushed the figure up. A positive effect of foreign exchange movements in the first half of 2024 was partly offset in the past four months, it said in a statement. 

Compared with the first half of 2024, when net inflows were at SFr3.7 billion (1.7 per cent annualised growth rate), net new money in the July to October 2024 period accelerated to SFr7.5 billion (4.8 per cent annualised). The latter result included a large single transactional inflow of which the majority left in November. Excluding this transaction, the July to October inflow pace was 4.2 per cent.

The Zurich-listed bank said net new money flowed in predominantly from clients domiciled in Europe (especially the UK and Germany), Asia (particularly Singapore and India), and the Middle East (especially the UAE). 

The impact of client deleveraging “diminished meaningfully” compared with previous years, it said. 

Julius Baer’s CET1 capital ratio, a standard international measure of a bank’s financial strength, rose to 16.7 per cent.

In the first 10 months of 2024, the number of relationship managers grew by 46 full-time equivalents to 1,389.