cougarblue wrote:
I have a friend in Private Banking at a BB (not ML/BOA) and he has never made a cold/sales call. He works on a fairly small desk, but the MBAs that have joined the group are not second tier types. He basically acts as client liaison and decides how to allocate assets, determines the risk profile, helps construct portfolio, answers any and all questions/concerns of the client, etc. It's possible that they have a different group within the bank that solely focuses on asset gathering, but his group does none of it. It seems like a good mix of interpersonal skills as well as investment knowledge which pays good money and doesn't take 70 hour weeks.
I have heard that some banks divide the private banking and private wealth management groups. For example, private banking may only deal with individuals with AUM >$25M, $50M, or $100M and private wealth may deal with individuals between $5M-25M, with retail financial advisor types taking anything below $5M.
I would assume that you would like to have a different kinds of people working with a $10M guy and a $100M guy. The $100M guy is going to demand top-notch legal, trust and estate advice and he is probably going to have a very different investment strategy as well.