Private Banking & Wealth Management

Bank Indonesia, Indonesia's central bank and banking sector regulator, is taking steps to clean up the private banking / wealth management sector. It's a part of a very carefully timed series of actions - and many politicians and public office holders are going to find that they have been caught wrong footed as a series of apparently unrelated measures have all come together to form an almost inescapable net for proceeds of corruption that have not, already, been removed from the country.

The United States is seeking an order from a federal court in San Francisco authorising the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to request information from HSBC Bank USA, N.A. about U.S. residents who may be using accounts at The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in India (HSBC India) to evade federal income taxes

Equifax, a provider of consumer credit and business risk management services, has acquired Workload Financial Business Consultants Limited, the UK's leading provider of strategic intelligence to wealth and investment financial product providers to leverage business development intelligence.

Hershey Trust Company ("HTC") has entered into a definitive agreement with Bryn Mawr Bank Corporation ("Bryn Mawr Trust") under which Bryn Mawr Trust will acquire the entire HTC Private Wealth Management Group (the "PWMG Business").

If there are two places on the planet that are firmly hostile to unauthorised breaches of bank confidentiality, they would be Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. When a former senior officer of a Swiss Bank's Cayman Islands branch says he will release details of accounts held at Bank Julius Baer the consequences are unpredictable.

No, it's not Hyundai Heavy planning to put a steel causeway all the way to LA, it's a tie-up between Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Hyundai Securities Co. Ltd under which they will co-operate in the USA and Korea in both securities and investment banking matters. The deal was announced yesterday and Opps is already looking at the wealth management opportunities.

Sanders Morris Harris Group Inc. (Nasdaq: SMHG) has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a 50.1% interest in Global Financial Services L.L.C., a wealth management firm. Both companies are based in Houston. The consideration was not disclosed.

Abbey International, part of the Santander financial group, has announced an increase in the rates it pays on deposits exceeding GBP100,000.

The Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (the HIRE Act) is packed full of complex tax incentives to encourage employment. But it has to be paid for and a provision hidden away towards the end of a very long Act makes provision for an attack on foreign banks operating in the USA which provide offshore services for American taxpayers - and some major changes to US law relating to tax evasion.

HSBC's Swiss, HSBC Private Bank SA, arm loses data - and takes three months to work out what happened