March 18, 2009

Swiss banks should still be able to attract foreign clients currently unnerved by changes to country's rules on banking secrecy, Julius Baer (BAER.VX) chairman Raymond Baer said in a newspaper interview."International clients will continue to appreciate the financial privacy traditionally anchored in Switzerland," the chairman of Switzerland's biggest dedicated wealth manager said in an interview for Wednesday's edition of Finanz und Wirtschaft.

Switzerland last week offered to relax strict bank secrecy in some tax evasion cases in a response to a global crackdown on tax havens that has been rattling the offshore banking industry.Baer said the government had been right to compromise on banking secrecy given prevailing political conditions, adding that 2009 would be an unpredictable year."Decisive is that the core of banking secrecy, the protection of privacy, is kept and that it doesn't come to an automatic exchange of information," he said.