Getting on 'in heels and backwards'

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Getting on 'in heels and backwards'

Sally Tennant is one of the most prominent women in British banking but she doesn’t mind being bag-carrier on occasion.“I once met Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, at a conference where she was having her picture taken and she asked me to hold her handbag,” she laughs.“She gave it to me, saying: ‘I don’t want to look like Margaret Thatcher in the photograph’. I loved that. Good for her.”

Tennant, 57, is chief executive of Kleinwort Benson, once one of the most illustrious names in London investment banking.However, after spells of being owned by Germany’s Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank, Kleinwort is now a specialist UK and offshore private bank with offices in London, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Cape Town and Munich. Now owned by Brussels-quoted financial services holding company RHJI, it manages assets of ￡5.6bn, advising wealthy family offices and entrepreneurs and helping to manage their money.

The firm’s mantra is that its purpose is to help clients to “create, enhance and conserve their wealth” and Tennant says that’s actually much more difficult than it sounds.“If you’re going to conserve your clients’ wealth, it’s about making sure you preserve the purchasing power and think about inflation,” she says “￡100 in 1965 is worth ￡6 in today’s money. That’s the terrifying statistic.“But people also think there hasn’t been inflation in the past five years, but ￡100 five years ago is now worth less than ￡85.”

Kleinwort lends money and gives corporate advice, helping privately-owned businesses to finance mergers and acquisitions and raise equity.Individuals need investable assets of more than ￡500,000 to hold an account, but Tennant says it’s a world away from some of the wheeling and dealing of Kleinwort Benson’s investment banking past. “We don’t run a capital book or compete with our clients,” she says.“We’re building on the 200-year heritage of the merchant bank as a newly independent bank and making it fit for purpose and relevant to what high net worth individuals and their foundations and businesses need.”

What do they need? Tennant won’t name any of the bank’s clients, but says that Kleinwort cut costs by ￡200,000 in one ￡300m portfolio simply by de-risking investments and changing accounts.Another client had 29 different bank accounts and was able to benefit from better interest rates through centralising holdings. “The family had been so busy running their businesses that they lost track of what they had,” she says. “We streamlined it for them.”Tennant, chief executive since January 2011, insists that work needs to be done to reposition its branding, because many people still identify the bank with the Kleinwort Benson of the past.

She has changed the bank’s strategy, moving it firmly into the ultra high-net worth sector by buying a unit called The Private Investment Office to service the “more complex needs” of people with at least ￡50m. “There was a lot that needed doing to the business,” she says.“It had been somewhat neglected under previous ownership, so the strategy we put in place was to grow the business.”

Within the first six months, she also bought the offshore business of merchant bank Close Brothers, increasing Kleinwort’s deposit base so it could lend more money. It also brought in a technology platform, on to which Kleinwort has successfully transferred its operations.Tennant accepts, however, that Kleinwort’s focus on private clients does not exempt it from the shame of being a bank, as far as many people are concerned.“The whole financial service industry, rather than just banks and bankers, has a lot more to do to persuade people that it can be trusted,” she says.

“That’s not just because of big bank scandals, but also the fact that after 2008 many people thought that their investments maybe were not as prudently managed as they thought.“I’m very conscious of the fact that banking does not have the best reputation.“It’s very sad for the private banks and wealth managers to be tainted with the image problem, but it just means that we have to work harder. That’s the reality.

Private wealth management contains plenty of potential pitfalls, with clients increasingly under the spotlight for tax avoidance and regulators worldwide on the lookout for potential money laundering.Tennant stresses that Kleinwort doesn’t offer tax advice, working with tax advisers to its clients in its offshore locations. It also turns down any potential clients whose wealth comes from uncertain sources.

“We have a high hurdle in terms of reputational risk and wouldn’t consider clients that did not pass our client criteria,” she says. “Part of that criteria is to have clients who are totally open and transparent about what they’re doing.“If we’re not confident about the client’s source of wealth or they don’t tick all our very high hurdles, we turn them down. We turned one down a few weeks ago.

“The absolute test is that: if we saw the name of a client on the front page of a newspaper with Kleinwort Benson’s name next to them, would we be proud of it and what we had done?“It’s as simple as that. If it doesn’t pass that test, you don’t want to have that client in your bank.”

Born and raised in Switzerland, Tennant, the daughter of a British diplomat, has spent her life in asset and wealth management, working for the first 18 years of her career as an analyst and institutional fund manager for SG Warburg, Morgan Grenfell and Gartmore.She then helped to found an absolute return boutique, Beaumont, with partners including Michael Dobson.Beaumont was bought by Schroders, where Mr Dobson is now chief executive, and Tennant was given the job of re-engineering the company’s private banking arm before moving on to the Swiss private bank, Lombard Odier & Cie.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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