Money, Machines and the Battle for Talent

Millennium Management’s reported negotiations with the Geneva authorities take on added significance when viewed alongside Vontobel’s decision to leave Zurich and relocate to Zug by 2030.

The two developments point in opposite geographical directions, but they tell the same story: Switzerland’s financial centres are competing increasingly aggressively for companies, investment professionals and tax revenues.

The $92 billion hedge fund already operates in Geneva and Zug, with the latter currently housing its larger Swiss office. According to the «Financial Times», Geneva is reportedly exploring a tax arrangement that would make the canton more attractive to Millennium’s highly paid portfolio managers and potentially support a substantial expansion.

The challenge is obvious: Geneva’s maximum personal income-tax rate can reach approximately 45 percent, compared with around 20 percent in Zug. Its exceptionally tight housing market is another obstacle.

Symbolic Loss for Zurich

Vontobel’s planned relocation gives the issue a particularly symbolic dimension. This is not an obscure financial boutique, but an investment house founded in Zurich in 1924 and closely associated with the city for more than a century.

If even such a deeply rooted institution chooses Zug, Zurich’s traditional status as Switzerland’s undisputed financial capital can no longer be taken for granted.

The broader strategic message is clear. Financial institutions today compete globally for talent, but Swiss cantons compete domestically for the institutions themselves.

Switzerland’s Financial Geography Is Shifting

Taxation is important, yet it is only part of the equation. Housing, infrastructure, regulation, access to international talent and the quality of the surrounding financial ecosystem increasingly determine where firms place their people and operations.

Geneva is trying to win Millennium. Zurich is losing Vontobel to Zug. Switzerland remains attractive – but its financial geography is being redrawn from within.

The latest crypto downturn tells us something important. Bitcoin may trade well below its record high, yet crypto wealth has proved remarkably resilient.

According to Henley & Partners’ Crypto Wealth Report 2026, 135,694 people worldwide now hold at least $1 million in digital assets. There are even 23 crypto billionaires.

To me, however, the more consequential story is not the number of millionaires. It is the mobility of their wealth.

Creating a Paradox

Traditional fortunes are usually embedded in a particular country. They are tied to companies, properties, banks, advisers and legal structures. Digital assets can move around the world within minutes and, if held directly, without a traditional financial intermediary.

But their owners are not borderless. They still need a place to live, educate their children, pay taxes and plan their succession. This creates a paradox: the more mobile the assets become, the more important the choice of jurisdiction becomes.

New Generation of Clients

I believe this will fundamentally reshape private banking. For crypto entrepreneurs, choosing a country of residence is increasingly part of asset allocation. Regulatory certainty, taxation, political stability, personal security and access to reliable banks and advisers all become components of wealth preservation.

These clients are generally younger, more international and less attached to one institution than traditional private-banking customers. Many created their fortunes outside established financial structures. They do not necessarily regard a bank as the centre of their financial lives.

Significant Opportunity for Two Wealth Hubs

Yet as their wealth matures, their needs become surprisingly traditional: custody, diversification, tax planning, succession, governance and protection against political or regulatory risk. The difference is that they expect these services to function across jurisdictions and asset classes.

For Switzerland and Singapore, this is a significant opportunity – but not an automatic one. Both centres offer stability, expertise and relatively clear regulation. Their real competitive advantage will depend on whether banks, family offices and advisers can connect digital wealth with the wider realities of family life. Crypto may be borderless. Wealth management never will be.

Research and advisory firm Gartner expects that up to 30 percent of employees displaced by artificial intelligence will have to be rehired by 2029.

I am not surprised. Companies that treat AI primarily as a cost-cutting instrument risk eliminating precisely the human capabilities they will need most.

For months, we have been hearing the same corporate mantra: AI will make organisations leaner, faster and more efficient. In practice, this often translates into fewer employees. Gartner now warns that many companies may be cutting too far, too quickly.

Up to 30 percent of workers displaced by AI could have to be rehired by 2029 because technology cannot fully replace human judgement, creativity and institutional knowledge.

Isolated Tasks

I believe this prediction exposes one of the great management errors of our time: confusing the automation of tasks with the replacement of people. AI can analyse data, draft reports, prepare presentations and accelerate countless processes. But a job is rarely just a collection of isolated tasks.

It also consists of experience, relationships, intuition and the ability to recognise when the available information does not tell the whole story.

Efficiency Is Not a Strategy

AI allows a company to produce more with fewer people, the immediate financial calculation appears compelling. Costs fall, margins rise and shareholders are satisfied. But what happens when the organisation loses its memory, its critical voices and its capacity to challenge the machine?

Gartner’s second warning is therefore even more important: by 2027, three-quarters of companies that convert AI-driven productivity gains exclusively into cost savings could be overtaken by competitors that reinvest those gains in innovation, modernisation and skills. That is the real strategic choice. AI can be used to shrink an organisation – or to make it better.

A Lesson for Wealth Management

This distinction matters enormously in wealth management. Our industry is built on trust, discretion and judgement. A wealthy client does not simply want an instant portfolio proposal. He or she wants someone who understands the family, recognises hidden risks, asks uncomfortable questions and remains accountable when markets collapse or personal circumstances change.

AI will undoubtedly transform private banking. It will reduce administrative work, improve investment analysis and make advice more scalable. But I would be deeply sceptical of any institution that interprets these advances as an invitation to hollow out its human expertise. A private bank without experienced bankers may be technologically impressive – but it will no longer be truly private.

Amplify People, Don’t Eliminate Them

The winners, in my view, will not be those with the smallest workforce. They will be those that use AI to give talented people better information, more time and greater reach. Recent Gartner research similarly argues that successful organisations are becoming “human-amplified”, not humanless. Companies investing in skills, oversight and new operating models are achieving better returns than those relying mainly on staff reductions, «TechRadar» reports.

The most valuable AI strategy is therefore not a redundancy plan. It is a reinvestment plan. Technology should remove routine work while allowing people to concentrate on what remains distinctly human: judgement, imagination, empathy and responsibility. Companies that forget this may soon discover that dismissing people was easy – but replacing what they knew is remarkably expensive.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is set to become the world’s highest-paid head of government.

His benchmark annual remuneration will rise from S$2.2 million to S$3.6 million – around $2.8 million. That is roughly seven times the salary of the US president. Many will find this excessive. I do not.

I have never understood why we expect exceptionally capable people to manage countries, oversee vast budgets and take decisions affecting millions of lives – yet become uncomfortable when they are paid accordingly. Singapore is a small country, but it is also one of the world’s most sophisticated financial centres. Its government competes for talent with banks, technology companies, sovereign wealth funds and global corporations.

Public Service Has a Price

Of course, public service should not be reduced to a financial transaction. A politician must be motivated by responsibility, conviction and a desire to serve. But idealism alone does not compensate for leaving a successful private-sector career. Nor does a modest salary guarantee integrity.

Singapore’s approach is unusually pragmatic: ministerial pay is benchmarked against the country’s highest private-sector earners, with a discount for public service. The argument is simple – if a country wants first-class leadership, it cannot entirely ignore the market for first-class talent.

High Pay, High Expectations

High pay, however, creates an equally high obligation. It must be accompanied by transparency, accountability and uncompromising standards of conduct. Singapore’s recent corruption case involving former transport minister S. Iswaran showed that generous remuneration cannot eliminate misconduct. Character cannot be bought.

Wong has pledged to donate his salary increase to charity for the next five years. That is politically astute, although I am not sure it is necessary. I would rather see him accept the salary and be judged relentlessly on his performance. For me, the real scandal is not that a prime minister earns S$3.6 million. The scandal would be paying that amount for mediocre leadership.

Singapore has chosen to treat competent government as an investment. If that investment continues to deliver stability, prosperity and trust, it may prove remarkably inexpensive.

When I began working as a financial journalist, professional competence in banking meant understanding balance sheets, markets, products and clients. Technology was a supporting tool. Today, that hierarchy is beginning to change.

How to use artificial intelligence is becoming part of what it means to be a banker. The «Financial Times» reports that Swiss bank UBS will require graduates and interns joining its global banking and markets divisions in 2027 to demonstrate how they can use AI to improve efficiency and outcomes.

AI-related questions will also become part of the recruitment process. To me, this is more than an interesting change in hiring practice. It marks a turning point.

New Definition of Banking Talent

Banks have traditionally recruited bright young people and trained them to analyse companies, prepare presentations and build financial models. Many of these tasks can now be accelerated – or partly performed – by AI. The competitive advantage will therefore no longer lie simply in completing the work. It will lie in asking better questions, recognising flawed answers and turning information into sound judgment.

This transformation will inevitably reach wealth management. Relationship managers will have access to increasingly powerful systems that can analyse portfolios, anticipate client needs and prepare personalised investment proposals. But AI will not understand a family’s unspoken concerns, internal tensions or long-term ambitions in the same way as an experienced adviser.

The More Powerful AI Becomes, the More Judgment Matters

I therefore do not believe that AI makes the human adviser irrelevant. On the contrary, it may make genuine human competence more visible. Routine knowledge will become cheaper; trust, empathy, experience and judgment will become more valuable.

UBS’s decision sends a clear message to the industry: AI proficiency is no longer a specialist qualification. It is becoming basic professional literacy. Yet banks should be careful. Teaching young employees to operate AI tools is relatively easy. Teaching them when not to trust those tools will be considerably more difficult – and ultimately far more important.