Retail Giant Will Remake Private Bank

Bank of America built its brand as a financial supermarket that could be all things to all people. Now, it will see if a new name can burnish its private banks reputation in catering to the very rich.

Brian Moynihan, the global investment management chief.

The company is expected to announce today that its business serving high net-worth customers will be called U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, taking advantage of its $3.3 billion purchase last November of U.S. Trust, one of the most prestigious names in private banking.

While Bank of America has long been an acquisition machine, the rebranding represents the first time it has adopted the name of a business it bought. Perception is important in the world of private banking, widely considered one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative areas in financial services, and Bank of Americas private banking operation has long been overshadowed by the banks predominantly middle-class image.

"Clients told us, Your brand gets lost in the market, " said Brian Moynihan, president of the companys Global Wealth and Investment Management division, which includes the private bank. "We are saying to clients that you are in this large franchise, but are in this special place."

A new advertising campaign is being developed and is expected to be rolled out shortly after Labor Day. Although the marketing giant Omnicom Group won the roughly $600 million account for the entire bank in August 2005, the private banking groups campaign was quietly moved to Hill Holliday, an agency at the Interpublic Group, a few months ago.

Nonetheless, some competitors snipe that the changes will ultimately prove to be cosmetic or they suggest that the merger and rebranding effort will water down the U.S. Trust name. For the bank that now calls itself the "bank of opportunity," they argue, promoting white-glove service for the extremely rich at the same time that the broad company is hawking credit cards and mortgages to first-time home buyers is a particularly tricky sell.

Other retail banks, like SunTrust, have chosen to offer their service to private banking clients under a separate brand name. Even JPMorgan Chase uses the J. P. Morgan brand to court the rich, distinguishing it from Chase, a mass-market commercial bank. But at Bank of America, the entire private bank will be under the U.S. Trust/Bank of America brand.

"Banks that have a very strong retail heritage, like B. of A., can often be stereotyped," said Allan Starkie, a founding partner of Knightsbridge Advisors, a boutique firm that provides consulting and recruiting services to wealth managers, "and it is much more difficult for them to create the image of being an old-world, high net worth and ultra-high net worth advisor." By buying one, he added, "the sensible thing to do would be to keep it separate and not tamper with its brand, prestige and way of doing business."

Over the last decade, Bank of America has been very successful in smoothly melding a lot of disparate operations, notably the mammoth acquisition in 1998 in which NationsBank bought Bank of America and adopted its name, and more recently, the absorption of the regional banking giant FleetBoston and of the credit card behemoth MBNA. So far, though, the merger of its services with those of U.S. Trust has been turbulent.

In trying to capitalize on the boom in global wealth, the new division of Bank of America is facing formidable competition. Investment banks like those at Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are aggressively courting rich investors, emphasizing their global networks and broad set of capabilities, like tax and investment advice or even financing the purchase of a private aircraft.

Yet the industry has at the same time exploded with niche players and boutique wealth management offices, which maintain that they can provide more personalized service and advice free from conflicts.

As the deal to buy U.S. Trust from Charles Schwab nears completion early in July, Bank of America has a lot at stake in making it work.

With about 5,000 advisers, nearly 134,000 clients and more than $270 billion under management, the company says its combined private banking operations will make it the largest private bank in the industry by assets. And Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of Americas chairman and chief executive, has made the expansion of its wealth management division a cornerstone of his strategy for increasing its size without striking another big deal.

"We are a monster company in this business," Mr. Lewis said in a brief interview while he was on his way to see private banking customers in the Napa Valley. "We expect it to grow faster than our consumer bank and commercial bank because of its demographics."

Despite a large roster of existing wealthy clients, Bank of Americas private bank is widely perceived as embodying many of the qualities of the larger institution, which emphasizes size and a standardized approach to customers — a characterization the company strongly disputes.

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