ZURICH – Julius Baer said on Monday that it was on track to reach its profit goals for 2022, even though “challenging market” conditions have hurt its assets under management a lot.
In the 10 months leading up to October 31, Switzerland’s third-largest listed bank said that the amount of money it managed dropped by 11%, to 429 billion Swiss francs ($449.07 billion). This was because the global stock and bond markets were falling.
It said that positive currency exchanges, especially the stronger dollar, and net new money flows of 3 billion francs helped make up for some of the 52 billion franc loss.
Related: The first nine months of 2022 had a $142.6 billion loss for the Swiss National Bank.
“Supported further by the careful execution of revenue and cost measures in the first two years of the current strategic cycle, the cost-to-income ratio, pre-tax margin, and return on CET1 capital (RoCET1) targets set for 2022 remain well within reach,” the wealth manager said in a statement.
Julius Baer also said that it is on track to buy back up to 400 million Swiss francs’ worth of shares by the end of February 2023, as planned.
The bank also said that 1 billion francs of assets under management had been changed to assets under custody because of asset freezes caused by sanctions put on clients because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
$1 is worth 0.9553 Swiss francs.
