Julius Baer Blocked From Big Deals as Regulator Blasts Bank
Julius Baer Blocked From Big Deals as Regulator Blasts Bank
(Bloomberg) -- Julius Baer has been banned from making any “large and complex” acquisitions as punishment for failing to do more to prevent money laundering in its Latin American business.
The Zurich-based lender fell “significantly short in combating money laundering” between 2009 and early 2018, Swiss regulator Finma said in a statement. The bank has been ordered to overhaul its money laundering measures and change the way it recruits, manages and pays its bankers, Finma said.
While the regulator can’t levy fines, the ban may be a more burdensome penalty for Baer, now under its third chief executive officer since 2017. The sanction will be lifted once Baer “once again fully complies with the law,” the regulator said.
Under former CEO Boris Collardi, the company bought the international operations of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and made nearly a dozen small acquisitions, particularly in Latin America, doubling the money it oversaw in the process.
The cost of the breakneck expansion came in 2018 with the arrest of one of Baer’s high-flying bankers in Miami who was later convicted and sentenced to 120 months in prison for his role in laundering money for Petroleos de Venezuela SA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.
Collardi, who left the bank in 2017 for Geneva-based Pictet Group, declined to comment.
Julius Baer said in a statement that it acknowledges “in principle” Finma’s conclusions, has cooperated with the regulator and implemented changes to address the deficiencies in its compliance controls.
--With assistance from Jan Dahinten and Patrick Winters.
To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Geneva at hugomiller@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Ross Larsen, Vernon Wessels
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