BrazilFinancial services consultancy Sionic opens Geneva office
Sionic, a consulting firm to the financial services industry, has launched a new office in Geneva, Switzerland.
With around 300 consultants and staff across the Americas, Europe and Asia, Sionic is a mid-sized international consulting firm. The consultancy is dedicated to financial services, and works for retail and investment banks, clearing houses and exchanges, asset and wealth managers, fund administrators, insurers and re-insurers and private equity firms.
Its entry into Geneva is part of a growth strategy to become “a world-leading specialist in financial services” said Sionic CEO Craig Sher. Formed last year following the merger between US-based Sionic Advisors and UK-based Catalyst, Sionic also plans to in the coming months open new locales in the United States and Hong Kong.
The Geneva office is the firm’s second in Switzerland alongside Zurich, and sixth in Europe and eleventh worldwide. The new hub will focus initially on the Swiss family office and asset management market. In the months to come the consultancy aims to extend its offering to include services such as financial crime and control, risk, regulation, technology and change management, and expand into the private banking segment.
Appointed to lead the office is Philip Biber, who joined the firm in August last year. Before joining Sionic, Biber was a founding partner and chief operating officer at MBaer Merchant Bank, having held previous roles as COO for HSBC Global Private Banking EMEA and as Global Head of Private Wealth Management Operations for Deutsche Bank in the United States.
“The combination of our new Sionic Geneva team with our existing Zurich base, means we can offer market-leading specialist expertise in the most technically demanding areas of the Swiss market. Combining that with our wider portfolio of specialist services means we can both address the concentration of clients within Switzerland and use this latest new base as a strategic part of our wider European expansion.”
Biber looks forward to hitting the ground running. “Geneva represents a major investment into exactly the areas of wealth management and private banking in which we excel. Having worked with many Geneva and Swiss-based clients throughout my career, I know the opportunities on offer, and am excited by key areas of growth.”
Last month, global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal also opened an office in Switzerland.
