It has been since June 2007 when the subprime crisis erupted in the USA and in May 2010, things continue to remain worse, at an edge.
Due to this unprecendentd crisis there have also been changes in the top private banks around the world. Interestingly, UBS and Citi continued to lose clients and their assets. Merrill Lynch which was absorbed by Bank of America also lost assets while it was able to survive as a merged entity with Bank of America. Some of the biggest beneficiaries in 2009 - on a global scale - were the European banks (BNP Paribas - Fortis, Deutsche and Barclays) with the exception of US based Morgan Staley who also gained market share. Chinese banks continued to gain market share in areas outside of asset management such as market capitalisation, largest IPO's, profitability, loan growth etc.
UBS continued to lose its market share from a peak of USD 2.2 trillion in 2007 as assets under management and is now down to USD 1.6 trillion in 2009 due to its issues with the US Government among other things.
Citi went down from USD 1.3 trillion to USD 332bn only in client assets but mainly due to its sale of the Salomon Smith Barney division. But then Morgan Stanely's assets (3rd largest in the world of Private Banking) also grew mostly due to its acquisition of Salomon Smith Barney.
Bigger is not always better. Hence, many client advisors moved to smaller boutique Private Banks or establised their own advisory firms and therefore lot of client assets also moved to smaller advisory firms and smaller boutique private banks in 2008 and 2009.
Sleeping giants could once again become asset-gathering machines