Get on your pony and thrive

Dr Thomas Meier, a former intelligence officer and chief executive for Middle East and Asia at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, finds learning polo to be child's play - but finds maintaining bank secrecy in the age of Wikileaks requires just as much coordination.

Polo, they say, is the most noble of pastimes. A game as old as the Persian empire, and played by sultans, shahs, kings and emperors.

Nowadays it's also played by bankers.

"Look around here, it's fabulous. It's a sensational place to entertain clients," says Dr Thomas Meier, looking across the lush setting of the Dubai Desert Palm, the Burj Khalifa soaring into the sunshine in the distance like some vast Egyptian obelisk, the sound of hooves thundering in the distance.

It is a place where a former captain in the Swiss intelligence services might feel out of place. But Dr Meier, possessing a Zurich University Phd in law, with a focus on taxation, finds polo a perfect match for Julius Baer, the Swiss private bank.

So much so that Dr Meier, the bank's Middle East and Asia chief executive, is happily receiving a polo lesson from Rodolfo Ducos, the Argentinian star.

"I was always fascinated by horses," says the bank chief, who learnt how to ride at his officers' club as he rose to the rank of captain. "Through this engagement with Julius Baer I found access to polo.

"It's a fascinating game to watch, it's captivating," he says, speaking softly but precisely. When asked about his life in the military, however, he deftly changes the subject.

His polo lesson gets off to a slow start, as if Dr Meier is so focused on trying hit the ball he forgets he is a skilled rider. But he is soon up to a decent speed and thumping the ball around with gusto.

Nowadays, Dr Meier has little time to indulge his passion for riding - the nature of living in a global time zone, as he puts it.

"I'm domiciled in Singapore," he says. "With my schedule, being half the time in Singapore and the other half in Switzerland and the rest of the world, it's practically impossible."

Julius Baer has been galloping after Middle Eastern clients in recent years. It was the first company to be granted a licence to operate in the Dubai International Financial Centre, in 2004, and also has offices in Abu Dhabi and Cairo.

But for all the rush of private banks jostling to take part in the Middle East market, Dr Meier says successful relationships inevitably take time. "You cannot force things," he says. But he is keen to point out that is a positive, not a drawback.

Julius Baer's sponsorship of last month's Cartier International Dubai Polo Challenge was its first foray into sports in the region. "Dubai is the tournament for the Middle East," Dr Meier says. "When you pick a tournament, you really want to pick a top tournament. We found in polo something that actually goes very well with the tradition [of Julius Baer]. Polo's a sport that goes back centuries … We found something which is played on a global field, matching our aspiration to be a global player."

The bank has funded youth teams in the UK and also donated Dh50,000 (US$13,610) to the Riding for the Disabled Association of Dubai over the course of the tournament. It also showcases homegrown arts and music in Switzerland.

The bank is keen to highlight its desire to be involved with clients from the moment money is made.

"We want to be part of the wealth creation, be there when wealth is being made and managed, but also when it's passed along to the next generation. Essentially, that's what a private bank is there for," says Dr Meier.

To that end, an affinity for Arabic culture is imperative for overseas bankers in the Gulf. Much can be gained from "a natural curiosity to discover new things", he says. "You have to enjoy being in an Arabic environment like in Dubai."

Not only that; being in touch with the next generation of high net-worth individuals requires considerable management of risk for the firm.

"You have to make sure you have people who have genuinely earned their wealth. That's key," he says."You have to be clear about the sources of money. If you can't really answer that question, at some point you're going to end up in trouble."

Some clients present more difficulties than others. Those with political connections often require the greatest amount of care, he says.

"It's not an easy situation. We talk about so-called 'politically-exposed people' and you need to be extremely careful about how you go about it.

"Do you want to really onboard them as clients? You see how things are changing very quickly in Egypt. All of a sudden, you have people who have been in power for 30 years [and are now] falling from grace."

Take Hosni Mubarak, the toppled Egyptian president, and one can see how the potential losses for private banks can be huge. Estimates of Mr Mubarak's assets have totalled more than $40 billion.

To put that in perspective, Egypt's debt repayments are expected to total $47.2bn this year, according to data from Bloomberg News.

Julius Baer says it does not hold any assets linked to the government of either Hosni Mubarak or Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's deposed leader. At the time of writing, the bank declined to comment on any holdings of assets related to the Libyan government.

But Dr Meier says watching clients closely as they create their wealth is an important part of keeping the bank clean of illicit cash.

"Before we even open the account, there's a huge due diligence you're going to do," he says. He says becoming associated with illicit cash generation is not in the bank's interest. "It's reputational fallout that you simply cannot afford. In the end a key component of banking is essentially protection of privacy. We will not protect this privacy for criminal money and criminal activity. We simply want to ensure that people who have made their money in a legitimate way and have it managed by a big institution, that essentially this money is protected."

The trouble for Julius Baer and others is that ensuring banking confidentiality has become a lot more difficult.

When a cache of documents were revealed by WikiLeaks in 2008, the bank's board was so furious it won a court order shutting the website - but not before mirrors of the site had sprung up.

The trouble did not stop there. WikiLeaks was later reopened by a California judge, to the delight of free-speech advocates.

To the bank's further embarrassment, in January, Rudolf Elmer, a former chief operations officer for Julius Baer's Cayman Islands operations, handed two CDs said to contain details of about 2,000 offshore banking clients to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Mr Elmer was fined 7,200 francs (Dh28,556) this year for breaking Switzerland's stringent banking secrecy laws in 2004. He remains in custody in Switzerland's Winterthur prison, awaiting trial in the WikiLeaks case.

On this subject, Dr Meier is tight-lipped.

"There's so much that's been said in the press," he says. "There's really nothing to add."

But WikiLeaks imitators keep popping up, like molehills on a pristine polo field. OpenLeaks, a site founded by a former WikiLeaks member, and a number of media sites including Al Jazeera has attempted to imitate WikiLeaks' "dead-drop box" format, allowing anonymous tip-offs of many gigabytes worth of sensitive information.

Dr Meier says the changing media environment does not fundamentally alter the game for Julius Baer.

"I do not want to basically change the principle of protecting my clients' privacy and that should remain," he says.

At the end of his polo lesson, Dr Meier dismounts and immediately signs up for another the following morning. His teacher praises how natural his swing has become after only a short course around the field.

"You appreciate how difficult it is," Dr Meier laughs. "It really requires a lot of co-ordination. I've a lot of appreciation for the players doing that sport."

But while the sport of shahs, sultans and kings requires much skill, private banking seems to require just as much expert co-ordination. And, for now, it's one area over which this former intelligence officer is not quite so willing to draw back the veil.