The shift in assets is being felt in the management ranks of private banking.
A lot of private banking has not been about advice but about pushing products.
The I.R.S. disclosure program is also creating headaches in the hush-hush world of private banking.
It tries to straddle the world between cheap online wealth management and the old world of private banking.
Deepak Sharma, Citigroup's head of private banking for the Middle East and Asia-Pacific says: "The industry is fragmented.
Since 2001, UBS has more than doubled the number of private banking offices in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
"My clients with a lot of money have a lot of private banking relationships, or lending relationships, or things we don't provide".
More galling still, it is doing well with a strategy copied straight from UBS: the integration of private banking, investment banking and asset management.
Zeno Staub, his counterpart at Vontobel, sees service and performance as two pillars of private banking, with stability or Swissness as the third.
Prior to joining PayPal, Sarah was Head of International Strategy at Barclaycard and Commercial Director of Private Banking for Barclays, UK and Ireland.
Another factor prompting foreign banks to leave their beautiful town houses for office buildings is the decline of private banking at smaller institutions, Mr. Cohen said.
