The Master Of Zurich

Nestled among the cozy restaurants and boutiques of Bad Homburg, a wealthy Frankfurt suburb, is a handsome 19th century villa with stained glass windows. Inside are the offices of Sauerborn Trust, which manages some $8 billion for about 100 wealthy German families, including the Quandts, the family that controls BMW. Jochen Sauerborn, who founded the firm with the Quandts in 1987, had vowed for years to remain independent. But late last year he and his partners sold for about $160 million to the leading Swiss bank, UBS. What changed his mind? Sauerborn says the Zurich giant's commitment to private banking was key. "All the [UBS executives] speak the same language we do," he says. "They have a clear vision. You don't find this at many German institutions."

UBS is on the hunt for other jewels like Sauerborn Trust. A creation of the $25 billion merger of Union Bank of Switzerland with its smaller but more aggressive Basel-based rival Swiss Bank Corp. (SBC) in 1997, UBS now has the largest market capitalization of any Continental European bank -- $87.5 billion. Yet it doesn't want to be a financial supermarket like Citigroup or HSBC. Instead, the management of private wealth, in the grand Swiss Tradition, is its core business. UBS has almost $2 trillion in personal and corporate assets invested, among the world's largest asset pools.