Bordier’s traditional approach prioritises personal touch

While many private banks are fast modernising their headquarters into Starbucks-style hangouts, where passing private clients drop in for a coffee and chat, Swiss player Bordier & Cie – which manages £6.5bn (€8.5bn) – is choosing its own path.

Bordier’s UK arm falls under the stewardship of ebullient chief executive Jamie MacLeod, who joined Berry Asset Management in September 2010, before it was remoulded in the image of its key Swiss shareholder at the beginning of 2014. Employees in his Pall Mall offices fostered a traditional atmosphere to match the bank’s black and white-tiled reception floor.

Visitors were met by smiling staff who ask about their day, before being ushered into an old-fashioned boardroom. Mr MacLeod is a big fan of this “high contact” model, having driven down client to manager ratios below 50 to 1 during his reign.

Meaningful contact gives customers better understanding of market dynamics and opportunities, he believes. “Many clients were nervous at first,” says the razor-sharp Scotsman with an impressive history at the helm of both Investec and Skandia in the UK’s cut-throat retail funds industry. 

“But rather than seeing markets as jittery, they now see buying opportunities. This is a very noticeable change compared to eras gone by.”

Because clients are coming in on a daily basis, underground parking will be a key feature in the expanding group’s next destination just up the road in St James’s, where Bordier has taken a long-term lease and will move in early February. 

Although the largest traditional Swiss private banks, Lombard Odier and Pictet, restructured at the end of 2013, divesting themselves of unlimited liability partnership status to meet demands of a fast-changing international market, Bordier has no plans to follow suit and shake-off its 170-year old roots.

“We like being a partnership,” confirms Mr MacLeod. “Clients really like it and it does genuinely shape our thinking.”

Bordier is “listening to our clients in terms of the offer provided,” he claims. “We are really focused on doing what clients want us to do,” helped by the lack of an interfering shareholder or the threat of consolidation.

That is not to say the customer book tells the same old story. Indeed Mr MacLeod is presiding over a genuine internationalisation of the client base, with UK resident, but non-domiciled, clients increasingly popping their heads round the door.  

These types of customers typically use three or four banks, which is why Bordier is building “bespoke” services in London to keep their interest. 

Indeed he has just hired Roberto Islas, previously with HSBC Private Bank, to build up an international desk servicing such clients, with a mandate to “recruit a multi-disciplinary team for the new division”.

DEFENSIVE FORMATION

Yet despite this development, Mr MacLeod is keen not to paint a picture of a relentless chase for new assets. “The DNA of our business lies in its existing clients. We are not growth focused in client acquisition.”

In fact, unlike many competitors, Mr MacLeod likes to boast his bank is “hugely understaffed” in the client acquisition department. The son of a professional footballer and a keen player himself in his youth, he likes to compare his company structure to a defensive formation.

“If I give you a football analogy, we have five at the back, four in midfield and one striker up front,” he says.

Rather than acquiring new assets, the focus for Bordier is on management of its discretionary portfolios. Currently, he oversees a very “long” position in equities, although this does not extend to emerging markets.

“We have the confidence to make asset allocation calls,” says Mr MacLeod. “We are not hugging benchmarks here and have made money for clients in all our strategies,” claiming a 6 per cent average return in 2014.

Rather than picking individual stocks and bonds, this performance is achieved by selecting mutual funds and integrating them into a client’s portfolio through effective asset allocation. 

Indeed he is happy to seed some relatively obscure managers, which sometimes grow into recognised brands, in addition to investing with the “more traditional names,” such as Fidelity.

“We were early supporters of funds at Liontrust, Neptune and Artemis as they built their franchises,” says Mr Macleod.

And this reliance on picking the best managers is likely to increase.

“After two years of relatively easy money-making conditions, when virtually every asset class produced a positive outcome, 2014 has been more of challenge, requiring tactical changes in asset allocation and the skills of active managers to navigate through tricky waters,” he says.

As we enter a period of divergent monetary policy in key economies and “grapple with an uncertain political backdrop,” Mr MacLeod believes 2015 is unlikely to be any different.