Private banks caught in the crossfire from retail regulations

Private banks have tended to concentrate on the super-wealthy – clients they now call professional investors – but as new regulations governing structured products continue to categorise most high-net-worth individuals as retail investors, private banks are left grappling with the same regulatory challenges as their retail counterparts. Magda Ali reports

Simon Gleeson, Clifford Chance

On the face of it, any individual investor is classified as retail unless they have been upgraded to a professional client by the regulatory authorities. But as private banks are discovering, wealth alone does not qualify an investor as a professional client.

"Most private banks are well aware that the mere fact an investor has a large sum of money does not make him a professional investor," says Simon Gleeson, partner at law firm Clifford Chance in London. "Monetary thresholds work at the