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Goldman Sachs Boosts Bet on London to Target World’s Rich

Goldman Sachs Boosts Bet on London to Target World’s Super-Rich

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is expanding its private-banking team in London as it builds out operations targeting the world’s ultra-wealthy.

The New York-based bank has hired at least nine private-wealth advisers in the city this year from rivals including Barclays Plc, Julius Baer Group Ltd. and Union Bancaire Privee.

Clement Hutton-Mills joined this month as a managing director from Rothschild & Co., building on the 60 or so advisers added by Goldman’s private-wealth unit in the past two years across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to a representative at the firm.

“We will continue to scale up as we see an opportunity to find the right talent and we see client demand,” Stefan Bollinger, co-head of private-wealth management for EMEA, said in an interview. “The U.K. is a highlight for our endeavor to grow the business.”

Goldman Sachs is boosting its wealth-management and consumer-banking unit as part of a strategy outlined by Chief Executive Officer David Solomon to make it less reliant on trading revenue. 

Former Barclays private bankers Pedro Dias Ferreira, Manuela Maia and Selina-Valencia McDonald began at Goldman Sachs in London over the past few months, according to their LinkedIn profiles. James Westropp joined from Julius Baer around the same time and Fiona MacLeod started earlier in the year after leaving UBP. The bank also expanded its private-wealth team in the Middle East this month and hired former UBS Group AG executive Gabriel Aractingi this year to lead its business in the region.

Global banks are vying for a greater share of the wealth created in recent years, driving fierce competition for advisers who can bring billions of dollars in client assets. Deutsche Bank AG hired Andrew Gallant from Barclays earlier this year to focus on family offices based in the U.K., while Yovan Dabee left UBS to lead the British bank’s coverage of wealthy Brazilians with a U.K. connection.

London rivals New York, Tokyo and Singapore as a global hub for the ultra-rich, partly due to its access to luxury homes, business opportunities and private hospitals. The city’s richest include members of the billionaire Rausing family, who own packaging company Tetra Laval, and Chelsea neighborhood landowner Charles Cadogan.

Revenue at Goldman Sachs’s wealth-management and consumer unit rose 35% to $2 billion in the third quarter from a year earlier. It had about $694 billion of assets under supervision at the end of September.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.