Skip to main content
Arnaud Leclercq - Swiss bank Lombard Odier in talks on Saudi partnership (Reuters)

Swiss bank Lombard Odier in talks on Saudi partnership

DUBAI, June 6 (Reuters) - Swiss private bank Lombard Odier is in talks to set up a partnership with a Saudi bank as it aims to strengthen its presence in the Gulf, its managing director said on Wednesday.

The Geneva-based bank, which had $281 billion in total client assets as of the end of last year, has a representative office in Dubai and is now looking at potential partnership options across the region, with a focus on Saudi Arabia.

“The model is to have a partnership with one of the best local banks so clients don’t have to transfer assets to Switzerland to us,” Arnaud Leclercq, partner and group managing director told Reuters.

“The money stays in the country, in the book of the bank, but we would have this partnership to manage the assets internationally,” he said, but would not name the Saudi bank.

Most of Lombard Odier’s clients in the Gulf are based in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The firm is also looking to open a second UAE office in Abu Dhabi, said Leclercq.

This week the Swiss wealth and asset manager launched its first sharia-compliant investment offering.

Lombard Odier has invested at clients’ request in line with sharia principles since 2012, but it has recently obtained a fatwa, or religious ruling, which allows it to market shariah-compliant investments.

Leclercq said that since 2012 Lombard has invested “a few hundreds of millions” of dollars in Islamic assets, and the target now that the firm has an official Islamic offering is to be close to investing $1 billion in sharia-compliant assets in a few years’ time.

The bank plans to invest in assets including sukuk, or Islamic bonds, equities and so-called “thematic funds”, such as Islamic real estate funds.

(Reporting by Davide Barbuscia; Editing by Susan Fenton)

DISCLAMER

All the information presented on these pages is open public access, especially on the Internet, and can therefore be read easily and independently of this site. They were only brought together to give coherence to a personal journey. This dedicated site contains only public information and has not been the subject of a prior agreement of past or current employers, who cannot be held responsible for any personal opinions expressed by Arnaud Leclercq.

Qui est Arnaud Leclercq?

Arnaud Leclercq

Arnaud Leclercq is a banker with an atypical background, a PhD in geopolitics and a professor at HEC in Paris. An MBA from HEC and a graduate of Harvard, he is a recognized executive in the world of wealth management, particularly with emerging markets. His book «La Russie puissance d’Eurasie. Histoire géopolitique des origines à Poutine», published in France (2013) and Russia (2015), is now a reference. His analyses are regularly shared by the media.