Andbank has acquired Swiss Asset Advisors, an American advisory firm founded in 2008, currently headed by Michael Blank. Following this operation, which is part of the group’s growth strategy, Andbank will integrate Blank and the rest of the Swiss Asset Advisors’ team into its Miami office. Swiss Asset Advisors will provide the Andbank group with a portfolio of U.S. customers, as confirmed to Funds Society by both companies.
Blank, with 17 years of experience as an international private banker, was responsible for establishing Julius Baer in Palm Beach (Florida) and Credit Suisse Private Advisors in Miami before venturing to create his own consulting firm in 2008 with Giuseppe Mazzeo, from Switzerland, in charge of investments. With 25 years of investment experience, Mazzeo developed his career at Credit Suisse, where he led the Investment Strategy global team, with over 40,000 million Swiss francs in assets.
Blank, who is aware of the increasingly important role Miami plays as a business and finance hub for Latin America, declared to Funds Society that “the individual approach offered to each client with tailor made solutions, and the office staff with over 100 years of combined experience in international banking,” were definitely some of the reasons which drove him to integrate his personal project with Andbank.
The executive also stated that he was attracted by “its open architecture plan, and the Andbank roots, a bank from Andorra operating as a family office, owned by two families with over 80 years of tradition.”
“Miami is a special place, with tax experience in trusts, wealth planning, and real estate for non-residential, cross border, and U.S. clients. Miami is a unique melting pot of cultures for families and their interests, and Andbank is focused on positioning itself as a reference,” said Blank.
The acquisition of Swiss Asset Advisors by Andbank is waiting for the approval from the regulatory authorities in Andorra.
For Javier Rodríguez Amblés, managing director of Andbank Wealth Management, the incorporation of Michael Blank and the rest of the Swiss Asset Advisors’ team, is due to the fact that Andbank “aspires to continue growing; a growth which continues to combine the firm’s own organic growth with acquisitions in strategic moments.”
Likewise, the executive said that without yet including Inversis, whose private banking was acquired by Andbank in Spain last July, the company would now have over 17 billion dollars under management, which has doubled the size of the bank in the past five years, one of the objectives which was set in its day by the bank’s senior staff when they made a commitment to international expansion.
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