The 209 year old private bank explained it was now required to publish financial results having made its Swiss bank, now called Banque Pictet & Cie, a limited liability company and brought management of the Pictet Group under a corporate partnership, both effective from 1 January this year.
Pictet said group profits for the first six months of 2014, to the end of June, of CHF203m (£133m, €167m), operating income of CHF975m and assets under management or custody of CHF404bn.
While Pictet does not publish information relating to the profitability or income levels of its business units, a breakdown of the company’s assets under management (AUM) is revealing.
As of the end of June, its wealth management division had an AUM of CHF150bn, its asset management division meanwhile, which provides segregated accounts and mutual funds to institutions around the world had an AUM of CHF144bn.
Furthermore, the company had assets in custody of CHF371bn within its asset servicing division.
In addition to opening a window on what has until now been a highly secretive Swiss bank, the results also provide an intriguing look at the history of the company which traces its roots back to the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
Originally founded as De Candolle, Mallet & Cie in Geneva on 23 July 1805 by Jacob-Michel-François de Candolle and Jacques-Henry Mallet, the business had an initial capital investment of 125,000 Geneva pounds (equivalent to CHF30m today). The company has now grown to employ more than 3,600 people in 26 offices worldwide.
Pictet also explains how the business has developed over the past two centuries – from its investment in the English railway boom in the early Victorian times to opening new offices in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong in the 1980s.
The company also boasts that over that period it has only had 40 partners and “because terms of the partners overlap, their knowledge, experience and values are absorbed and passed on without interruption”.
