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The ultra-rich, including the corrupt and the sleazy, still prefer to keep their wealth in Switzerland than in any other country with Swiss banks reportedly warehousing $2.4 trillion of assets belonging to wealthy foreigners last year, reports Political Economist NG.
Asian nations, Hong Kong and Singapore, are second and third most preferred countries respectively by the rich to keep their money, according to the recent Global Wealth Report published annually by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Political Economist NG reports that Switzerland, the beautiful Alpine nation, has been noted as the offshore wealth capital with public officers who looted their countries’ treasuries and business people electing to keep their money in Swiss banks.
Looted funds from Africa have been known to find their way into vaults in some Swiss bank. UBS Group AG, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer Group, Swiss National Bank are among the top banks in the European nation where such money is kept.
Some Nigerian leaders, especially the late General Sani Abacha, have had their ill-gotten wealth stashed away in Swiss Banks repatriated to Nigerians, recounts our reporter
So far, about $1.032 billion of Abacha loot had been returned to Nigeria by the Swiss government as part of the over $1.5 billion stolen by Abacha from the public treasury.
Next to Switzerland as preferred destination for offshore funds is Hong Kong with $2.2 trillion stashed in her bank vaults, while Singapore closed the gap with $1.5 trillion of cross-border assets.
A year ago, BCG forecast that Hong Kong would overtake Switzerland as the world’s leading offshore wealth centre by the end of 2023. That prediction has now been put back until 2025.
With China imposing a strict Covid-19 lockdown for most of last year, anticipated inflows of Chinese mainland wealth into Hong Kong failed to materialise.
“One of the main reasons for the delay is the slowdown in growth of Chinese assets as well as asset outflows towards Singapore, which is positioned as a ‘safe haven’, closely aligned to the West,” Michael Kahlich, partner at BCG Zurich and co-author of the study, told SWI swissinfo.ch.
Globally, cross-border banking is currently booming in the face of political and economic uncertainty, such as the Ukraine war and rampant global inflation. This resulted in $12 trillion of wealth crossing national borders last year, said BCG.
“Geopolitical tensions and other macroeconomic forces have prompted many investors to shift assets,” said Kahlich.
Switzerland booked 4.1% more cross-border wealth from emerging markets compared to 2021 and 2.3% more from developed economies, according to the Global Wealth Report.
But other locations are proving a more powerful magnet for offshore assets. In the next five years BCG forecasts a 9% annual increase in offshore assets booked in Singapore and 7.6% in Hong Kong compared to 3% in Switzerland. This would result in the Asian booking centres challenging Swiss dominance.
The Swiss banking sector is currently adapting to the collapse of Credit Suisse in March. Wealthy Credit Suisse clients withdrew CHF110 billion in the last three months of 2022 and a further CHF60 billion in the first quarter of 2023.
A report by consultancy group KPMG earlier this month showed that the flow of new client money into 73 Swiss private banks (excluding UBS and Credit Suisse) slowed last year to a third of the volumes witnessed in 2021.
But Kahlich refuses to write off Switzerland, which he believes will retain its attraction to foreign wealth. “Swiss wealth managers continue to set the bar in terms of products offered, investment expertise, and the depth and variety of service offerings,” he said.
Additional reports by Swiss info.com
