Julius Baer News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Despite the ongoing market volatility and geopolitical uncertainties, India remains firmly at the centre of global emerging market allocations, said Rahul Malhotra, region head of emerging markets and member of the global wealth management committee at Julius Baer Bank. Investors are likely “to start looking at India more actively again” by the end of the September quarter, he told Mint in an interview.Malhotra said investors remain positive on India, although many are currently in a wait-and-watch mode due to the geopolitical tensions, oil price risks, and broader macro developments.“Are we continuing to see interest in India? The short answer is yes,” he said.Malhotra added that while investors had become accustomed to 25-30% returns in recent years, such gains are not sustainable indefinitely and expectations will need to normalize over time.

Rupen Rajguru, MD, Senior Advisor, Julius Baer, says we are seeing a classic bottoming of the market and recovery will be slow, and not as significant and fast as we have seen in the previous cycle. But probably the market looks into the rate of change and at the margin, FY26 is going to be significantly better from an earnings perspective vis-a-vis FY25. What is your take on the overall market sentiment because in 2025 there has been a change in the narrative on how you look at the emerging markets, especially India. March has been quite a volatile month for us though we are cheering the recovery from the lowest level but the harsh reality is that among the SMIDs, there are pockets where we might not see the stocks recovering back to those 2024 highs. Is it the time to deploy more or rather be selective? Rupen Rajguru: Purely from a market perspective, in the very short to near terms, sentiment and liquidity determines the market momentum and both of these change very fast. Probably on March 4th, we were the worst as far as the sentiment and liquidity was concerned. So, while liquidity has not changed, but definitely in the last two weeks or so, sentiment has changed. And why has the sentiment changed?

Swiss banking giant UBS on Tuesday posted $770 million in fourth-quarter net profit, launching a $1 billion share buyback program in the first half of 2025.

Gold prices scaled a four-week peak on Friday and were set for their best week in seven, driven by safe-haven demand amid uncertainty over what policies U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will pursue, while markets awaited jobs data for clues on the trajectory of U.S. interest rates, as per a report. Spot gold climbed 0.4 per cent to $2,679.65 per ounce, as of 1250 (GMT) after hitting its highest level since December 13 earlier in the session. Prices have risen by more than 1 per cent this week. U.S. gold futures rose 0.6 per cent to $2,707.00, Reuters reported. The most bullish outcome for gold is the narrative of ballooning fiscal deficits and unsustainable debt weighing on the U.S. dollar in the longer term and causing doubts about its role as the world’s reserve currency, said Carsten Menke, analyst at Julius Baer, according to Reuters report.

«I would simply say in conclusion that Donald Trump does not like a strong dollar. When he talks about the dollar, he says he would want it to go down. So, if it does keep going up, I think that he would not like that very much,» says Mark Matthews, Julius Baer. What looks like a buy America, sell emerging market trade looks like it is reversing. In last couple of days, emerging markets and especially India, they have made a comeback. So, do you think the transition what we saw after Donald Trump got elected, that long dollar trade, is that getting over? Is that getting rusty? Mark Matthews: Hard to say. There are so many moving parts to this incoming administration. But on a fair value purchasing power basis, the dollar is slightly overvalued. So, fundamentally, it should not go up anymore. But if this Trump administration really ignites the animal spirits of the US economy, if they remove sanctions, which they may do, which would attract more buying of treasuries, and if they introduce tariffs, all of that would conspire to the dollar going up more.

«There will not be a wide across the board earnings growth. There will be pockets which will show growth and which is where the market will look into,» says Rupen Rajguru, Head of Equity Investment & Strategy, Julius Baer. What is the market telling us in the sense that there has not been any incremental negative news flow as such, but it is not taking off? Do you think the interest in the overall markets is on the lower side or is it just time-wise consolidation that we will have to deal with? Rupen Rajguru: As you said what is the market looking for. So, while you said that there is no incremental negative, but at the same time there are no incremental positives. So, usually, we had this phenomenal bull run between 2020 and 2024 wherein the earnings compounded more than 20% plus for largecaps and 25% plus for midcaps and 30% plus for smallcaps.

"Geopolitical events do not seem to be causing any impact on the world economy. In fact, there is potential for some deceleration in geopolitical problems over the next 12 months," says Mark Matthews, Julius Baer. The disconcerting factor we were discussing is when it comes to the quarterly earnings back home, is there some sort of a sense of a slowdown that could be prolonged due to macro concerns in India? Mark Matthews: I do not know if it is macro concerns, but you are absolutely right. I think the major issue facing India now is the deceleration in earnings growth. And the Nifty will still clock around 10% earnings growth this year, but the most recent quarter, it is looking very flattish.

financials are currently the most attractively priced segment of the market today. The valuations in the sector clearly offer a margin of comfort,” says Nitin Raheja, Executive Director, Julius Baer India. In an interview with ETMarkets, Raheja said: “The other segment that we feel strongly about is discretionary consumption which is a multi-decade story in India,” Edited excerpts:

China's central bank held back on buying gold for its reserves for a fourth straight month in August, official data showed on Saturday. China's gold holdings stood at 72.8 million fine troy ounces at the end of last month. The value of the gold reserves, however, rose to $182.98 billion compared with $176.64 billion at the end of July.

Mark Matthews, MD, Julius Baer, says he wishes there would be a pullback in the Indian market. It is becoming overvalued. Matthews further says that there does seem to be some sectoral rotation going on. In India, the growth is the opposite of what it is in the US. In the US, value is smallcaps and growth is big caps and in India, it is the other way around. I think there are a lot of emerging sectors in India that are small now but will be big sectors in the future like hospitality, defence which are in the midcap space and I would say those are the growth areas that long-term one would do well to be in. Everything is moving on expected lines and I look at the market from the prism of the US Fed. The US Fed pretty much has said what everybody was expecting, growth is decent and rate cuts will start. Mark Matthews: I did not expect them to be so overt in telling us there will be a rate cut in September. They did not need to because the market is already pricing one in. I felt that was interesting. There was no urgency in the statement or Jerome Powell's comments to the press but the most interesting thing is there was a sentence in the statement for two years saying that inflation was the most important criterion and that was replaced with the dual mandate of inflation, but also employment.

The Swiss private bank said on Tuesday (23 July) that Bollinger, who has been picked for the top job following a «comprehensive search», will start his role no later than 1 February 2025. Based in London, Bollinger is a partner at Goldman Sachs and a member of the firm's European Management Committee and of the Global Wealth Operating group.  He has worked at the bank for nearly two decades, including five years in his current role. Bollinger joined Goldman Sachs in 2004 and has been a partner for 14 years. Julius Baer CEO departs after private credit write-down contributes to 52% ...

Working closely with the markets team in Zurich, Lupi will identify a strategy to build and broaden the firm's markets offering, ranging from derivatives and securities to foreign exchange and structured products.  Lupi joins the firm from Pictet's London office, where he was in charge of global market trading. He joined the Swiss firm in 2011 as a senior managing director, based in Singapore. Jefferies reiterates 'Buy' rating for Julius Baer on rebound potential «I am thrilled to join Julius Baer International in this new role as the company continues to sharpen the personalised o...

«I think the overriding is that the strong earnings growth in India and the fact that it is the domestic investors who are deciding the direction of the market much more than in the past when it was foreigners who would be held back by investing in emerging markets because they were worried about a stronger dollar. So, I feel same as I felt two years ago that it is still a good market,» says Mark Matthews, Julius Baer. Now, May is likely to be a very hectic month, full of data points, especially global mixed data points coming out of US. Here, we are already looking at progress of monsoon, earnings, and polls. What is your current positioning as far as Indian markets go? Well, we have been bulls on India for, I guess, around two years now and there is no change to that view. Of course, emerging markets are often slowed down by a stronger dollar and we have had a stronger dollar up until a couple of days ago.

Mark Matthews, MD, Julius Baer, says: “China is not a good market to invest for the long term and if you put $100 into India 30 years ago, it would be about $1,800 today, which is remarkable considering what the rupee has done over that period of time. $100 in China would be about $150 today. So, it has been a destroyer of capital. However, there are opportunities that come along in every market, including China, and I think this is one, firstly, because their economy is bottoming out and it is not only cheap, it is abnormally cheap. I think China will be about 20% to 30% higher between now and 12 months from now. But beyond that, I would not hold it.” After how long have you come to India and what is the staggering change that you have felt? Mark Matthews: It has been around two years since I was last in India and it is great to be back.

In the newly created role, he will be responsible for the firm's advice-led wealth management offering for private clients. Reporting to chief commercial officer Robin Eggar, he will be based in the firm's London office. Brooks Macdonald enjoys 8% revenue boost from acquisitions Charalambous worked at Investec W&I between October 2020 and October 2023, most recently as co-head of private clients and global high net worth. Before that, he was managing director at Julius Baer and has held senior roles at RBC Wealth Management and JP Morgan. Former Brooks Macdonald CIO Edward Park joi...

Edited excerpts: From the perspective of NRIs and foreign investors, there has been a consistent uptick in investments in India year on year, fuelled by the country’s stable and genuine long-term growth trajectory. With a projected growth rate of 6.5% this year, surpassing that of any other country, and an anticipated GDP of $5 trillion by FY25, India's market is garnering increasing attention.

Macquarie Capital is writing down nearly its entire investment in Indian startup Byju’s, weeks after Swiss bank Julius Baer Group Ltd. accused it of charging fees based on an outsized and outdated valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. The unit of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd. is cutting the value of its stake in the beleaguered education provider by about 98%, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Macquarie Capital invested a few hundred millions of dollars in Byju’s in 2021, said the people.

The project will bring together innovators, investors, and subject matter experts from across the wealth management value chain to explore how families can best use technology to manage rapidly expanding portfolios of tokenised and digital assets.It is estimated that $1 trillion in assets will be transferred to the next generation in the Middle East over the coming decade. However, only 24% of High-Net-Worth Individuals have a full estate plan in place.

Jefferies analysts Tom Mills, Fangfei Li and Laura Gris Trillo have cut their estimates for 2023-2025 earnings per share by 7-18%, reflecting a weak second half of 2023 and a 'lower outlook for rates'.

The share price of Julius Baer plummeted after the Swiss private bank disclosed 606 million Swiss francs ($692.7 million) of loan exposure to a single conglomerate client.

In a stock exchange notice, the group revealed, without naming Signa, that it possessed three loans to different entities within 'a European conglomerate' that was now restructuring, totalling CHF 606m (£545.4m).