Credit Agricole Suisse is the main private banking arm of Credit Agricole Group, with Middle East offices in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Beirut, Doha and Dubai. Executive recently sat down with Frederic Lamotte, the bank’s chief investment officer, to discuss how private banking has changed in the last two years. E How did you manage to keep your clients during the crisis? First, the structure of the bank is very solid and the name itself has helped retain some clients. Second, I would say that from more of an investment point of view, we had the insight of not pushing our clients into risky products. We have always had a, not conservative, but relatively safe approach to investment. We never had any Lehman products; we never thought that Lehman or other United States investment banks were adequate for supporting investment products for our clients. We never proposed structured credit products to
