Boss of private bank Coutts says impact of Brexit negligible
The chief executive of private bank Coutts said today that Brexit would have little impact on the bank or its customers.
Coutts boss Peter Flavel said “the impact on us as a business [of Brexit] is not great,” in an interview on Bloomberg TV.
He said the majority of the bank’s wealthy clients were UK-based, with smaller numbers coming from Europe.
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He said that Coutts also serves 20,000 entrepreneurs who “don’t wait around for politicians to make decisions”.
“Quite a lot of them are putting their investment plans to one side until they can see what the decision is.
“Quite a lot of others that have simply exited Europe and said ‘we’re not there’ – a lot of others are already trying to look for markets outside of Europe because they're entrepreneurs,” he said.
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Coutts, the Queen’s bankers, unveiled stellar results at its half-year, with operating profit up 85 per cent year-on-year to £151m.
Flavel, the Australian boss of the bank, said: “Our strategy seems to be working quite well, our recently released half-year results had return on equity of 15 per cent and that is triple what it was three years ago.”