Karam Hinduja poses for a photo in Geneva, Switzerland
Karam Hinduja has rather non-Swiss ambitions for the Swiss private bank he took charge of last year.
Srichand Hinduja’s 31-year-old grandson, the patriarch of the $18 billion Anglo-Indian Hinduja Group, says he wants to keep his grandfather’s value intact while trying to revamp the bank to attract an existing clientele. Bigger, less stuffy. In an interview at the bank’s Geneva headquarters, Karam said he refers to his employees as the bank’s customers who may have achieved success as public entrepreneurs. technology as well as from finance.
“If your client is wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops, feel free to do the same, meet them at their level,” the executive says.
Karam took over the bank during a difficult time for Hindus, with a growing dispute between the family of his ailing 85-year-old grandfather and Srichand’s three younger brothers. The bank at the center of the conflict doesn’t help either. In a legal battle, Srichand – represented by his daughter Vinoo – is claiming sole title to the bank. SP brothers say the bank is part of Hinduja Group.
Karam took the helm in early 2020, a year that saw client wealth fall more than 30% from just two years earlier to 1.69 billion Swiss francs ($1.82 billion). The drop was due to a decrease in asset values, not due to customer withdrawals. Total assets under management rebounded to 2.43 billion Swiss francs at the end of October.
Karam has renamed the bank as SP Hinduja Banque Privee, although on the website of the Hinduja Group it is still referred to as the Swiss Hinduja Bank. The CEO sometimes calls about the family dispute from people who know his grandfather but says it’s “noisier” than anything else and says he’s focused on charting the future of the bank.
“I know about the dynamics going on at the family level, but I’m here to try and build a great financial institution,” he says with an East Coast accent honed over a decade in New York. York as an undergraduate student at Columbia University and later in venture capital.
While in the US, he was close to having to choose a different career path, spending a year at Nick Bollettieri’s elite tennis academy in Florida in an effort to turn pro. That was derailed by a herniated disc and realized he wasn’t going to make the cut. He has now returned to Europe to join the family business.
At the bank, he couldn’t be more different than his predecessor, Gilbert Pfaeffli, a former Swiss Army colonel who spent three decades at UBS Group AG. Pfaeffli was hired in 2016 after a bad investment in commodities trading resulted in the bank’s reported loss of 25 million Swiss francs.
“There was a lack of control, a lack of order,” Karam said. Pfaeffli “is the perfect guy, with the background he has, to bring military style into the organization.”
The bank was stripped of its Cayman Island banking license in May 2020 for failing to meet anti-money laundering compliance rules. That unit was demolished at the time and was closed, Karam said. The bank also faces two claims totaling 6 million Swiss francs from unidentified former customers “alleging a breach of the bank’s obligations”, according to the bank’s annual report.
Karam brought four people to Geneva from Timeless Media, a digital media company he founded in New York, and some of Srichand’s similar advisors from London to get things right.
“I don’t come from the traditional financial world,” Karam said, wearing a black suit and black open-collar shirt. “I’ve made trades, I’ve invested but I’m not from a banking establishment.”
The bank introduced the Climate Action Portfolio, a fund that focuses on investments in alternative energy to attract a different type of investor. Hinduja said he plans to penetrate more into India, where young entrepreneurs from Indian families who have left the country are now returning.
“The industry is growing in India. The market is moving. There are a lot of opportunities,” he said.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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