Union Bancaire Privée Brand Guidelines: Edgar de Picciotto’s 1969 Geneva Private Bank

A name the registry first refused.

Union Bancaire Privée began in Geneva on 11 November 1969, when Edgar de Picciotto set up the Compagnie de Banque et d’Investissements (CBI), English Wikipedia says. The bank’s own history, A Family Affair, says he had settled in Switzerland in 1954 and joined Société Bancaire de Genève in 1956, building a career in wealth management before starting his own house. It also tells a small story about the name: the founder wanted “Union Bancaire Privée” from the start, but the commercial registry turned it down as too grand for so young a company.

The name came with growth. In 1990 CBI acquired TDB-American Express Bank, English Wikipedia records, and the combined business became Union Bancaire Privée. The bank’s history dates the cheque for the purchase of American Express Bank to 28 February 1990 and says the deal made the bank four times larger. From then on the bank used the long French name and its three-letter short form, UBP.

In the bank’s own telling, the family link reaches back much further. A Family Affair traces the de Picciotto family to merchant shippers in Livorno and traders in Aleppo in the seventeenth century, and to a line of consuls in Aleppo from 1784, before the family moved its trading business to Beirut. The bank presents that history as part of its identity: a bank founded in 1969, with a family story of four centuries behind it.

The same history says CBI moved into offices on the Cours des Bastions in Geneva in 1972, and that in the 1970s the founder took an early interest in hedge funds, a field in which the bank says it later built a hedge-fund selection business.

Growth by acquisition.

UBP grew largely by buying other banks’ private-banking businesses. English Wikipedia lists the takeover of the Discount Bank and Trust Company in 2002, the Swiss arm of ABN Amro in 2011, the Paris fund-of-hedge-funds firm Nexar Capital Group in 2012, and Lloyds Banking Group’s international private-banking business, announced in May 2013. On 26 March 2015 UBP signed an agreement with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group to buy the international private-banking activities of Coutts & Co International, which brought it entities in Switzerland, Monaco and the Middle East. Banque Carnegie Luxembourg and the London firm ACPI followed in 2018, and in 2021 came Millennium Banque Privée in Geneva and Danske Bank International in Luxembourg.

The bank calls its most recent purchases a major step forward in Switzerland and the United Kingdom. On 2 April 2025, Portfolio Adviser reported, UBP completed its purchase of SG Kleinwort Hambros from Société Générale, and that bank became Union Bancaire Privée (UK) Limited, with offices in London, elsewhere in the UK, Guernsey, Jersey and Gibraltar. The bank’s history says its purchase of Societe Generale Private Banking (Switzerland) also completed in 2025.

Today UBP describes itself as a “pure-play” Swiss private bank and asset manager, family-owned and supervised by FINMA, with its head office in Geneva, some thirty locations and 2,667 employees as of 30 June 2026. The family controls the bank through CBI Holding SA, the company says. Its office pages add that UBP has been active in Luxembourg since 1971, through the subsidiary Union Bancaire Privée (Europe) S.A., which serves as its European hub, and that its Monaco branch was created in 2014. The founder’s son Guy de Picciotto has been chief executive since 1998, and his brother Daniel de Picciotto became chairman in 2016, the year in which, the bank says, the second generation took over full management from the founder.

In January 2016 the US Department of Justice announced a resolution with Union Bancaire Privée under its Swiss Bank Program, the scheme through which Swiss banks resolved their exposure over accounts held by US taxpayers, English Wikipedia records, citing the department’s announcement.

How private banks present themselves.

Private banks and wealth managers sell trust, continuity and discretion rather than a product on a shelf, and their identities tend to say so quietly. Many lead with a founder’s surname or a family name set as a restrained serif wordmark, sometimes paired with a crest, a heraldic animal or a founding year. Pictet, for example, says its lion comes from a seventeenth-century family coat of arms and has carried the year 1805 beneath it since 1974.

Colour usually follows the same register. Deep green, navy, burgundy and dark brown are common choices across the sector, often set against cream, stone or white, with a muted gold or brass as an accent. The effect is closer to a bound annual report or a club library than to a retail bank, and bright, saturated colours are rare.

Imagery leans on history and people. Websites and printed material often show portraits of founders and partners, historic premises and archive photographs, alongside heritage timelines that count the generations or the years since the founding. Partnerships and family-controlled houses in particular use their age and ownership structure as part of the message, explaining how decisions are taken and who is responsible.

The content itself is advisory. Typical pages cover wealth planning and succession, family offices, investment views and house research, market commentary, sustainable investing and philanthropy services, often with long-form articles and reports rather than short promotional copy. For designers, the sector is a study in restraint: generous white space, careful typography and a narrow palette do much of the work that louder brands leave to slogans.

“The drive you demand.”

UBP’s public face is built on its initials and a slogan. Its website carries the line “The drive you demand,” which the bank says reflects the energy, expertise and personal service clients should expect. The campaign pages speak in turn to private clients, institutional investors and external asset managers, and quote the chief executive on independence. The main sections follow the shape of the trade — wealth planning, family-office services, investment solutions, fixed income, equities and alternative investments — alongside a daily macro update and an insights section.

The heritage material is built around the family. A Family Affair pairs the founding story with archive images: a certificate dated 1805, a view of Beirut, the cheque of 1990 and the bank’s Geneva buildings. It also illustrates a Sphere by Arnaldo Pomodoro from a private collection, and describes support for theatre, classical music and the visual arts, as well as a de Picciotto Chair in Alternative Investments at INSEAD. The bank says it signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment in 2012.

For a design guide, UBP shows how a bank founded in 1969 can draw on a long family story and present it in a measured, corporate voice. Compare Coutts, whose international private-banking arm UBP bought in 2015, and UBS, another Swiss bank. For this guide we use a deep navy, slate and a warm stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Union Bancaire Privée’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.