But old Siegmund knew all about private banking.

Former US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner visited Singapore last week in his new role as president of global private equity fund Warburg Pincus and his presence hardly raised a ripple of interest. No wonder, writes MSC Newswire's Peter Isaac.

Singapore has taken over from Switzerland as the home of private banking with the added impetus of becoming the centre of Chinese private banking too.

Driven out of Switzerland by a Franco-US led purge on anonymous accounts, the private banking sector and its customers have settled in the orderly city state and have been joined in this surprisingly verdant sanctuary by their Chinese contemporaries uncertain of the continuing sanctity of their perch in Hong Kong.

In fact Geithner (pictured above) was in town to launch there the Singapore branch of Warburg Pincus whose local management declare that Singapore will be their new Asian “hub and spokes.”

Warburg Pincus is descended from the old E.M Warburg & Co famous for an-inter family struggle centred on the right to use the Warburg name. The feud was led by the head of the London branch of the family, Siegmund Warburg. In the end the row became moot when the New York family bank was effectively sold to Pincus.

Siegmund Warburg (pictured below) was famous for his collection of business aphorisms. One of these seemed to have anticipated the current emphasis on private banking.

According to the late Siegmund Warburg’s maxim there are only three types of men who can keep a secret............“There is the man who tells his wife.    There is the man who does not tell his wife.    Then there is the man who forgets what the secret was in the first place. “

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk Wednesday 27 Ju;y 2016