Interview with Gérald Mathieu, CEO of Barclays Monaco, Director of Private Banking Europe and the Middle East, also Chairman of the Commission for the Promotion of the Financial Place at the AMAF.
Tell us about your wealth management journey
I have worked in banking for just over 30 years, on the investment banking and private client side. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, I’ve always found it exciting to work with entrepreneurs – whether it’s a large company or a smaller one – because each of them has a unique story. They are at the heart of the economy, and their ideas, their energy, their talent, their work generate wealth.
Thus, through my responsibilities in investment banking, merchant banking and private banking, I can now extend this connection with entrepreneurs.
At Barclays, I very quickly took on a leadership role, managing teams to support, develop and grow. I joined Barclays Monaco almost 13 years ago, initially as Commercial Director, then I was promoted to Managing Director of the private bank in Switzerland. This allowed me to cover the Geneva and Zurich teams, where we have maintained very strong growth, and to develop the European and Middle Eastern areas.
Monaco is a strategic location for Barclays as an international private bank. Two years ago, the opportunity arose to return to Monaco as CEO, while allowing me to retain my responsibilities for Europe and the Middle East.
Barclays Monaco
International private banking is a strong ambition of the Barclays Group in the areas I cover, and we had a very good year in 2022. It should be noted that private banking was not necessarily Barclays’ core business but it is increasingly becoming one. It is an extremely resilient business, especially in times of crisis. It’s a business that generates profitability. Both profitability and recurring revenues, which are long-term and thus support the bank’s balance sheet, which is essential, especially in more complicated cycles when you have to be very solid financially.
How to reassure investors in times of crisis?
Our job is to accompany our clients and to be particularly close to them in complex times. That’s when our clients are waiting for us and where we need to explain to them what is going on. Explain why their investment solutions are long-term. Why diversification is a fundamental element of their asset management. Why it is also important not to make hasty decisions in times of fear and insecurity. It is our job to be courageous. This is the message I am conveying to our teams.
It is in these times that we must also remind our clients of the absolute necessity to diversify approaches and investments. Diversification above all, but also portfolio protection, because there are tools to protect portfolios. We have an extremely efficient trading room here with great professionals who have these hedging solutions and who are particularly dedicated to hedging for complicated periods.
Barclays solutions made in Monaco?
Of course, we draw on what our parent company makes available to us. But here in Monaco we have 250 people, including investment teams. Our trading room is very efficient. It is open from 8am to 10pm after the close of New York and is staffed by traders in equities, bonds, derivatives and currencies, a subject that has always been very important to Barclays, as it is the third largest currency trader in the world.
It is important to be able to execute locally and quickly. I stress this point because we don’t always realise the importance of having middle desks, back offices and trading desks available. Once again, during periods of panic or radical change in the markets, we have to be able to act quickly, within a minute or an hour. Our teams are here and can execute trades instantly without the need for other intermediary desks. And that makes all the difference.
The execution of a trading desk is a key point. Having the mandate management teams in Monaco, which obviously follow the philosophy of the London teams, is a major criterion for delivering the service we want to offer our clients.
Proximity is also significant; it creates this relationship of trust which is in line with the very meaning of private banking. It’s a human relationship and it requires courage, to dare to face complex situations sometimes, to explain to the client the reason and the possible solutions that arise.
What type of products do you offer your entrepreneurial clients?
At Barclays in Monaco we have access to an investment banking arm that helps us a lot. We can therefore support entrepreneurs in the development of their company, whether it’s for an IPO, a merger or acquisition, a capital market operation or to raise debt.
The investment bank will sometimes provide us with access to direct investments, which by definition are not solutions available on the market, and which consist of investing directly in companies. These are often niche sectors, such as plastics processing, vaccines, or nanotechnology. Our clients appreciate the prospect of having access to targeted opportunities.
The investment club is particularly relevant to our entrepreneurial clients. We will present them with a management mandate consisting of 40 or 50 companies and it is the diversified, long-term part that will particularly appeal to them, although these investments do not require a great deal of time on their part.
For entrepreneurs who still have shares in their own company, they will appreciate the engineering part that we can provide (hedging or, on the contrary, taking on private debt). If we can help them to leverage their shares, we can also help them to diversify through a 360° vision, while looking ahead to the years to come, in order to diversify their risks and secure their assets by investing in the mandates.
As Barclays is a very global entity, we will be able to support a client resident in the Principality wherever Barclays is located in the world, from Monaco.
The private market is becoming a fast-growing demand, particularly among Monaco residents and Monegasque entrepreneurs. We can clearly see that this part of the business, private placement and private equity, is gaining in interest. However, we are not too focused on the early stage, more focused on the slightly more advanced cycles.
What about your Millennial customers?
This is an important generation for us, because they are the children of our clients and the transfer of wealth is going to be very significant over the next five to ten years. For that, it is imperative that we are prepared. This means adapting the way in which we communicate, the way in which we produce reports and the way in which we present to them how we can manage their assets. This requires ever greater transparency, innovation, but also questioning.
What is more is that it also requires us to recruit millennials. Recruiting new employees and making sure that in this recruitment too, we have the right diversity, that is to say, recruiting women, people who come from different backgrounds, different minorities, and thus creating a mix of talent that will be able to understand, identify and meet the requirements of our young clients.
Gradually it is these new teams that will help us create products, generate the right reports, and communicate the relevant information to these new generations.
And then, of course, ESG more than ever, is the key topic for this generation. So they expect us to focus on technology, transparency, service and ESG.
In the latest Barclays report entitled “Investing for Global Impact”, our large families tell us that these issues have become key topics and confirm that they have started to allocate a significant proportion of their wealth to these themes.
Recruitment and attractiveness of Monaco
Major renowned institutions with a lot of expertise and quality teams have come to set up in Monaco, which makes the financial centre more visible. So in a way, it’s becoming less difficult than before to attract talent.
At Barclays, we recruit in other European markets and outside Europe. This is a strength, because it brings a new way of working, of thinking about things. It also allows us to challenge ourselves.
But we still have a lot of work to do together. In my role at the AMAF, this is a subject that we have put on the agenda and on which we will work, because it is imperative for our marketplace to attract and recruit talent. For my part, it seems to me that we are still hiding our capacities too much. In Monaco, we have an extraordinary market, with incredible clients, a real dynamic, a very present Government, a unique stability, a Sovereign who has a real vision, and we, the financial players, must promote these assets.
The Blue Economy
Damian Payiatakis is Barclays Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing – and covers the blue economy-finance part. We have 2-3 core areas in this sector:
Firstly, in all our mandate management strategies we have a blue bias. We make sure that we propose companies that address these issues in our clients’ portfolios.
At the level of the investment club, we also often have companies or funds that have a blue footprint: a fund in aquaculture, a company in yachting, an additive to optimise the biodegradability of plastics and reduce pollution in the oceans for example.
Finally, Damian is working on a direct equity portfolio programme in the blue economy.
There are therefore three major topics, with real investment applicability for our clients, and last but not least, the research and analysis in partnership with the Blue Marine Foundation.
What does the Monaco Ocean Week mean to Barclays Monaco?
We are well aware that for a quarter of families, the blue economy is an important element in the way they want to allocate the impact investment part of their business, but that we are only at the beginning. So we also have a responsibility to educate them on this topic.
The Monaco ocean Week is a way for us to draw attention to the issues of ocean preservation and to help educate our employees, our clients and the new generation who are expecting this.
