Historically, it has always been tough to figure out which private bank is best, so this year we set up a role-play situation.
We short-listed six banks and gave them the profile of a dotcommer who had sold his business and had $4 million of investable assets. His domicile was in the UK, he lived in Hong Kong, and he planned to have two children. His concerns were with capital preservation, tax planning and not having too much exposure to the US stock market but he wanted a return of around 10% per annum. All in all, about 20 hours of meetings went into this process, and it was enlightening.
The personality of...