Most UBS advisers to join Crestone

Former UBS wealth management head Mike Chisholm and a group of senior advisers have established Crestone as an independently-owned global wealth management business, it was announced yesterday.

UBS told ifa Mr Chisholm was confident that all former UBS advisers would go across to the new business.

According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, advisers have been given up to 48 hours to decide on whether to join the venture or take redundancy.

Geoff Stansen, Gary MacKenzie, Andrew Lees, Leigh Birtles and Don Chandler are among the group of senior advisers from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane who, together with senior management, led the push for the creation of a new partnership firm.

Crestone will continue to use UBS's global macro-economic and local equities research and its capital markets deal flow.

"Our objective is to create Australia’s first independent global wealth manager – combining an in-depth knowledge of local equities with access to the best range of global products including international direct equities, international OTC fixed income, multicurrency accounts, foreign exchange and international margin lending.

"We will also be looking at opportunities to continually grow our product offering to suit our clients’ investment objectives," Mr Chisholm said.

UBS's global vice-chairman for wealth management, Alain Robert, said, "The decision to cease providing wealth management services in Australia was a difficult one and was made after considering a number of factors.

"The wealth management industry is experiencing substantial changes due to increased regulatory and client requirements which have led to increasingly complex operational processes.

"UBS' global wealth management business model of providing holistic client advice has become increasingly difficult to fully operate on a sustainable basis in the local market, which is dominated by a brokerage-based system," Mr Robert said.

Crestone expects to be operational from October 2015.