Miles Robinson, head of the Birmingham office at Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, introduces the Birmingham Post Rich List 2011.
Welcome to the Birmingham Post Rich List. An acknowledgment of the region’s most successful individuals, the Rich List has become a veritable institution and is always eagerly awaited. Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management is proud to sponsor the 2011 edition.
For those of you who don’t know, Private Wealth Management – or PWM – is the division of Deutsche Bank for high net worth clients in the UK and around the world.
I head up PWM here in Birmingham, where we have an established local team that brings the global expertise of a major investment bank to the city.
Our parent, Deutsche Bank, is currently one of the fastest-growing employers in the city centre, with more than 700 people now working here and ambitions to grow this to over 1,000 by the end of 2011.
We know what a fantastic place Birmingham is and have a strong commitment to the city and its people.
Many financial institutions have been through difficult times over the past few years, but Deutsche Bank has emerged with its reputation enhanced.
It is not just our strength as a business but our commitment to our clients that has helped drive our success.
We work hard to understand our clients’ personal goals and to translate them into practical financial plans for life. For some of the people on this list it will be to preserve the wealth they have achieved; others will be looking for growth. Everyone is different.
Our aim is to be the leading trusted adviser for wealthy individuals and their families in this region. We know from experience that the best way to achieve that is by putting our clients first.
It is our core values – client focus, teamwork, innovation, performance and trust – that connect our businesses, regions and markets and form the basis for the way we work. Our passion to perform has helped our clients realise their financial goals.
As part of what we envisage will be a period of continued growth and development in Birmingham, we are also proactively seeking to work alongside clients’ existing trusted advisers. This way, established relationships already based on trust and strength can benefit from the full range of our global suite of services – including, to name just a few, portfolio management, lending and structured solutions.
Those of us who have worked in Birmingham for several years will know how the city has become transformed. This is an exciting time. It can also feel worrying too.
Investors in Birmingham – in keeping with those across the country – have become warier since the credit crunch. It is human instinct to feel more bullish when markets are rising, and the crisis, coming after several years of growth, was a sharp lesson in risk.
Investors today are probably feeling less aspirational about the potential rewards from investments and are much more concerned about reducing the risk of losing money. And if investors have learned hard lessons in recent years then so have wealth managers.
We live in an era of rapid change. These days, wealth managers need to be more dynamic, to respond nimbly to volatile markets. They need to embrace alternatives and look further afield for sources of growth for clients’ assets.
I would argue that to do that successfully you need the capacity to analyse a huge amount of data – to be able to identify threats and opportunities in the global marketplace.
You need product expertise to highlight the most appropriate investments for clients, including those offering insurance against the kind of unpleasant and unexpected market shocks we have witnessed during the past few years. And you need a level of resource that enables you to act on outcomes decisively.
Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management has that.
It is easy to be gloomy, especially in a period of cuts and austerity, but we shouldn’t forget that recessions and downturns present opportunities as well as challenges.
There has always been a strong entrepreneurial spirit in Birmingham, as illustrated by the many PWM clients who are continuing to prosper through hard work and innovation, and this shouldn’t change.
The enduring success stories contained in this year’s Rich List underline what a tremendously exciting and vibrant city this is.
That is one of the reasons why it is a real privilege for us to be here, looking after the investments of some of Birmingham’s key business leaders – people whose energy and drive are underpinning the prosperity of not just the Midlands but the country – and why we are delighted to recognise and celebrate their achievements with you.
