Joining Maseco as chief operating officer for Maseco’s Swiss operations is Gordon Hunt, who had been a senior vice president and member of the management committee of Rothschild Bank in Zurich. His most recent position there was chief risk officer of Rothschild’s private banking and trust division. Prior to joining Rothschild’s 10 years ago, Hunt spent 17 years at Merrill Lynch, primarily in its Swiss and international private banking operations.
Hunt, who is an associate chartered accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, will be based in Maseco’s Zurich offices rather than Geneva, where it also has an outpost.
Also joining Maseco, as a London-based member of its client adviser team, is Graham Aikin. Most recently Aikin was with St James’s Place Wealth Management; before this he worked with American clients at Coutts & Co.
Maseco has seen demand for its specialist services soar following the UK Treasury’s recent changes to its non-domicile tax rules, and as the US government has sought to crack down on tax evasion by US citizens by increasing the reporting requirements for them and the foreign financial institutions which look after their assets.
The company was founded by Joshua Matthews, James Sellon and Emilia Chachulova – all three of whom had been part of Smith Barney’s London wealth management operation – together with Alex Eichorn, formerly of Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander.
The setting up of Maseco coincided with a global shedding of Americans by foreign banks that has continued and some say intensified with the passage last year of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which requires foreign financial institutions with American account holders to provide information on these accounts to the US tax authorities.
Last year the company launched a discretionary management service to enable advisers without expertise in the area of US tax, custody and regulatory matters to take on American clients, by working with Maseco.
