Switzerland's Bank Frey May Apply For SEC Registration

Tom Burroughes

9 May 2013

Zurich-based Bank Frey & Co may try to register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the country’s powerful financial regulator, to manage customer assets in the country, according to Dow Jones, quoting unnamed sources.

Bank Frey & Co believes that obtaining a local registration would demonstrate it is in compliance with US rules, the report quoted sources as saying. Opening a branch in the US would be a departure from Bank Frey's traditional practices, which have limited it to operations in Switzerland that are governed solely by Swiss law.

In April, Stefan Buck, Bank Frey's head of private banking, was indicted in New York alongside Edgar Paltzer, a Zurich-based attorney who allegedly recommended clients to Buck. The men were charged with helping Americans open accounts to hold funds that weren't declared to the US Internal Revenue Service.

The news service said Bank Frey chief executive Flavio Battaini didn't respond to a request for comment. Efforts to contact Buck by phone and email were unsuccessful. Paltzer declined to comment, it said. An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment as well, it added.

This publication was unable to reach the persons concerned at the time of going to press.

The bank said last month it suspended Buck to give him time to deal with his legal issues. Bank Frey had roughly SFr2 billion ($2.1 billion) in assets under management last year with about 44 per cent of that held on behalf of US taxpayers living in the US, according to the indictment.

As reported by this publication and elsewhere, a number of Swiss banks have ceased to provide offshore banking services to US clients. A landmark case was that of UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, which in 2009 settled criminal and civil charges that it had aided tax evaders. In a historic partial breach of Switzerland’s long-running secrecy laws, details on hundreds of client accounts were agreed to be handed to US authorities.

Among the casualties of tough US action has been Switzerland’s oldest private bank, Wegelin & Co., which is now defunct. (The non-US part of Wegelin has been transferred into a new entity, part of Switzerland’s Raiffeisen.)