This is the first installment of an Executive special report on wealth management and private banking. The rest of the report will be published here over the coming week. It should not be surprising that combinations of Swiss and Lebanese virtues have a lot of potential for profitable relationships, including some that are taciturn to the point of being almost clandestine. Private banking is first among them. Although the business is as old as banking itself, private banking would never have become what it is today — namely a business model built from confidentiality, asset management fees and ultimate skill in pampering the rich — had it not been for people like the ultra-discrete Edmond Safra moving from Lebanon into the world and for others walking in his footsteps. Union Bancaire Privée (UBP), the Geneva wealth vault of Beirut born Edgar de Picciotto, a Mizrahi Jew like Safra, is a supreme
